By Robert Royal

An intelligent friend, let us call him Randall Smith, just invited me to come back to America for a conference at Notre Dame on "the Catholic imagination": "There won't be any imagination at the synod worth writing about, I imagine." I don't entirely disagree. But - despite the grindingly bureaucratic optics - I don't entirely agree either.

When the One, Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the central spiritual and moral institution of the West and of the entire Christian world, engages in an exercise of this scope, however banal in many ways, it has real effects. And not only in the Church. Though in this instance, I think, mostly not the effects that the synod organizers - and maybe Pope Francis himself - had in mind.

One of the synod's conspicuous weaknesses is precisely a lack of Catholic imagination. I've grown increasingly interested in that subject - and was happy to speak at the inaugural conference of the MFA program founded by another TCT contributor, James Matthew Wilson, at Professor Smith's University of St. Thomas, because the world is in a culturally suicidal rut.

And without some new and strong cultural efforts - which I think only the Church has any chance to provide - we're going to continue along towards an anti-cultural apocalypse.

Besides, in Rome, it's hard to ignore the sheer power of the Catholic imagination amidst the massive presence of churches, statues, paintings, mosaics that you meet everywhere. And that always has ways of stimulating imagination.

By contrast, the synod delegates this week are slated to discuss the "module" on "Pathways." If the very word "module" - a term that got inserted into humanistic studies in the 1970s to make them seem more modern and scientific - doesn't depress you, half a century on, about the state of the Church, I don't know what to say.

And just in case you think there's little harm in that, there are four sections to this "module" that the delegates will be carefully shepherded through these next few days:

An integral and shared formation

Ecclesial discernment for mission

Decision-making processes

Transparency, accountability, and evaluation.

These abstractions sound like nothing so much as the kind of government guidelines that teachers, administrators, federal and state officials, and everyone else in our politically bloated world are forced to spend time on every day in Europe and America.

It's hard to believe that the synod organizers and the pope himself, whatever their hopes, received this - the opening of the "Pathways" module - from a drafting committee and didn't send it back:

A synodal Church is a relational Church in which interpersonal dynamics form the fabric of the life of a mission-oriented community, whose life unfolds within increasingly complex contexts. The approach proposed here does not separate but grasps the links between experiences, allowing us to learn from reality, which is reread in the light of the Word of God, from Tradition, from prophetic witnesses, and also reflects on mistakes made.

We can probably all agree that learning from reality and our religion is not a bad idea. As for the rest, the lesson that the synod may be teaching the Church is - unintentionally - a good one. Namely, that if this is the kind of language that you think will lead to "discernment in the Spirit" and the flattening out of the "pyramidal" Church (Cardinal Hollerich) into a more synodal one, a lot of the people you are supposed to be listening to will have quite strong reactions.

And there's a very real hope that the abstractions will simply fall away and a focus on the reality of what remains will be the true achievement, if any, of synodality.

Because it's clear that even some synodal enthusiasts have been forced to find paradoxical goods coming from the process, since neither the progressive changes on women, LGBTs, and the rest of the wish list will not be forthcoming now, or perhaps ever. As one delegate put it (according to ...