Models for Reinventing Commonweal Local Communities

by Jack Rakosky

"These (CLC) groups are for learning about and discussing far-reaching topics in local spaces. Your conversations may focus on the recent issue of Commonweal Magazine, it may focus on recent news or events, or you might take advantage of our Conversation Starter Series. Overall, we recommend establishing a common vision for your CLC at the first meeting of each year. Each community determines their goals, set-up, meeting times, and the readings best suited for them."

- From Commonweal website: Tips for Planning Meetings

Restarting the Cleveland CLC after the pandemic should not be left up to who happens to attend the first meeting, especially since many on our CLC list have found it difficult to attend meetings because of conflicts and travel distances.  Thoughtful email discussions and additional posts on this website are an important prelude to reopening. Therefore, I have used the skills gained as a researcher and planner in the public mental health system to put together this post. 

Brief History of the Cleveland CLC

An organizational meeting was held at the Hansa Brewery on Wednesday, September 13, 2017.  Nine of the sixteen persons on the membership roster showed up. Most had never met before.  One member offered his home for future meetings, but the group preferred a Catholic parish or school. Within a month we had found a very hospitable parish where we continued to meet monthly with only a few exceptions. The contents of our first year of meetings are described in the first post of this blog. Additional posts document each of the rest of our meetings. The last meeting of an almost unbroken series of 29 monthly meetings occurred on February 24, 2020.  The pandemic forced us to cancel future meetings.

Participation in the CLC

Over the course of the twenty- nine meetings, a total of 36 names appeared at one time or another on the membership list. Almost all of these were Commonweal subscribers. In 2018 there were about 165 Commonweal subscribers with an email address within thirty miles of the center of Cleveland. Therefore, about one in five subscribers expressed some interest in our CLC. 

Over the same period twelve people participated regularly (i.e. at least four months or more). Two people left the area after participating regularly and one died. New people joined the monthly meetings at various points; sometimes members took vacations. An additional four persons came to meetings two or three times. Therefore, sixteen persons, about one in ten of the subscribers in the Cleveland area with emails, participated substantially in our meetings. However, they did not all do so at the same time. 

Thirteen persons on the membership list came to only one meeting. Their reasons for not returning were twofold. Either they did not have enough time and/or the travel distance was too far. Finally, seven persons had only email contact with the CLC. They continued to express interest in remaining on the mailing list. Again, not having enough time and/or the distance to travel were the main barriers. 

Our typical meeting had 5, 6 or 7 participants. On rare occasions we had 3 or 4. On equally rare occasions we had 8 to 12. The initial organization meeting and meetings held to discuss the sexual abuse crisis generated the most interest. 

Since the long drive to attend CLC meetings was a major deterrent to participation we asked Commonweal to provide us with numbers of subscribers by Zip codes to see if there was some optimal strategy for locating meeting places in our area. Subscribers who signed up for the Cleveland CLC like all Commonweal subscribers were spread over the Cleveland metropolitan area. No meeting location was found that would not be a long commute for many members and subscribers

CLEVELAND COMMONWEAL SUBSCRIBERS BY ZIPCODE

For example, in the Lake County portion of the metropolitan area, there are only twelve subscribers. Half of them would have to be recruited in order to get six subscribers to a meeting. This analysis could be repeated across the Cleveland area. The implications of the data were clear. 

In order to have CLC meetings within easy driving distance, there would have to be at least four or five CLC groups, and unless half of the subscribers in the area came, non-subscribers would have to be recruited if more than six persons were desired at meetings.  

Therefore, the future growth of the Cleveland Commonweal Community Network requires at least several members taking initiative to establish several CLCs across the area as well as many members recruiting nonsubscribers from their social networks.  A Network of CLCs could provide not only reduced commute times to the nearest CLC but also additional meeting options each month if one is willing to travel a little further.  Finally, Commonweal had a blog on its site for ten years. Since its closure, a group of former participants has continued to post weekly and comment daily on each other posts. It uses Blogger which powers this website. By allowing any member to post, and/or make comments we could make the Cleveland CLC Network a virtual as well as physical community.  

Commonweal Local Communities 2.0

On Sunday, November 17, I received an e-mail message that I had not seen in more than three years "New Member for your Commonweal Local Community." When I googled the person's name, I found an association with John Carroll University. Instantly the idea formed. This November is the Centennial Issue of Commonweal. Now certainly is the time, and perhaps John Carroll may be the place, to begin to reinvent Commonweal Local Communities.

Below is a list of "models" for reinventing CLCs. In Greenleaf's Servant Leadership model, I am a conceptual rather than operational leader. Other people are always better at putting my ideas into practice than I am. 

Grassroots Spiritual Movement Model

CLCs started as a grassroots movement.  Commonweal provided readers with a webpage to link up with established CLCs, or to initiate a new one for their area.  Almost all the members of our CLC were Commonweal subscribers generated by the web site; only a few knew each other, and only a few were recruited by members.   Religious movements grow through social networks (family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc.) not through mailing lists of unrelated persons.

According to the website, “Commonweal fosters rigorous and reflective discussions about faith, public affairs, and the arts, centered on belief in the common good.”  CLCs “gather in their local communities for critical conversation on the issues that matter most. Each community determines their goals, set-up, meeting times, and the readings best suited for them.  As for the conversation itself, many use Commonweal's Conversation Starter Series while others discuss readings from the pages of the magazine or set their own agenda entirely.”  Commonweal Local Communities may be seen as a spiritual movement of persons and communities who engage in the practice of reading Commonweal or other materials on issues that matter most in the light of faith centered on belief in the common good.

Therefore, Pope Francis’s vision in the Joy of the Gospel of “an ecclesial renewal which cannot be deferred” applies also to CLCs. “I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.”  Francis says “The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community. It is a community of communities."  In summary he says: “other Church institutions, basic communities and small communities, movements, and forms of association are a source of enrichment for the Church, raised up by the Spirit for evangelizing different areas and sectors.”  What Francis says about parishes as networks of communities, and the multiplicity of forms of association within dioceses and the universal church should be applied to creating CLCs

Network of Local Communities Model

Catholics are members of multiple communities: households, families, neighborhoods, parishes, workplaces, professions, civic associations, etc. Some of these communities may be strongly Catholic, others are composed mostly of Christians, and some may have many members who are of little or no faith.  “Critical conversations on issues that matter most” will vary widely depending upon both the type of community and the faith of its members.  The resources they use in addition to Commonweal will also vary. Some may use mostly Catholic resources, others mostly biblical resources, and others mostly secular resources.  Therefore there is no one size fits all model for a Commonweal Local Community.   

Anyone who is a subscriber to Commonweal can start their own CLC in their home, neighborhood, parish, workplace, public library, etc. Commonweal's generous five articles a month will provide an article a week making possible even weekly meetings. The whole archive of one hundred years is available on-line from which a subscriber may choose articles, then e-mail up to five links a month to non-subscribers.  Whether a subscriber chooses to register the CLC with Commonweal depends  upon the nature of the local community. If one’s household, family or neighborhood CLC is not ready to welcome any reader living in the surrounding thirty miles, there is no reason to advertise on Commonweal. A CLC forming in a parish may want to limit itself to parish members, or it may want to attract any Commonweal reader in the county.  Depending upon the “missionary spirit” of the Commonweal subscriber, a Commonweal Local Community may be focused upon the “issues that matter most” to families, to a network of friends of a particular household, to a parish, a city, a county, a workplace, a profession, political issues, economic issues, environment issues, etc.  The key element that makes them CLC is the spiritual discipline of reading Commonweal articles and/or other materials centered on the belief in the common good.

University/Liberal Arts College Leadership Model

As historian John McGreevy points out in the Centennial Issue, the first financial backers of Commonweal were mostly graduates of Ivy League universities and liberal arts colleges, newly minted members of the establishment. They desired intellectually engaged representations of their faith, e.g. models for faith inspired public leadership. Robert Greenleaf in Servant Leadership lamented the failure of both churches and higher education to foster outstanding personal and institutional leadership in service to others institutionally. He was convinced that organization would arise that would fulfill this need. Could Commonweal be one of those organizations? 

Pope Francis wants Catholics to be both forward looking and outward looking. Fostering faith inspired leadership both in the Church and in the world should be the mission of Commonweal Local Communities. In my professional life I helped the local mental health system recognize and promote the talents of persons with mental illness. Each year a consumer's achievements are celebrated. In our CLC I have found other people who have provided inspired leadership in their professional lives. That takes quite different forms. For example, the way I approach issues of truth and justice as a social scientist is very different from the ways that lawyers approach similar issues. One night when we were discussing church leadership, we admitted that clericalism often made it more difficult to provide leadership in our parishes than to provide inspired leadership in our professional lives. Our parishes need to recognize the inspired leadership many Catholics provide in the world.   

A Commonweal Local Community associated with a Catholic institution of higher learning could become a great place for aspiring leaders to meet with experienced leaders in their community. Commonweal provides free subscriptions to students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs. 

What Makes for a Fulfilling Life Model

Recently Pew asked people what was extremely/very important for a fulfilling life. The top answers were: "having a job or career they enjoy (71%)" followed closely by "having close friends (61%)."  Far more distant were "having children (26%), " making a lot of money (24%), and "being married (23%). We increasingly live in a world in which our political and religious institutions are in disarray. Parishes have in the past provided "community" with their emphasis on families. However, marriages now often end in divorce, and children are abandoning the faith. And of course, the rising incomes of the 50's and 60's which supported family centered congregations are mostly a thing of the past. In the midst of all this could Commonweal Local Communities that emphasize "having a job or career that they enjoy" and "having close friends" become islands of hope? Let's explore the possibility!

Recruit a Friend Model

After the first two meetings of our CLC, I recruited Betty whom I had met at a meeting that was much like a Commonweal meeting. About a dozen people (among them some PhDs) were discussing the Book of Enoch. It was clear that Betty would enjoy Commonweal meetings and not be inhibited by professionals. She was not a Commonweal subscriber. When I learned at our first Commonweal meeting that she also prayed the Divine Office, I invited her to Vespers at the Local Orthodox Church and dinner afterwards. Both of us lived alone, and neither of us have family caretakers in the area. She is immunocompromised, so we have resided together since the pandemic. Not only do potential friends make good local community members; local community members can also become best friends.

If each CLC member who is a subscriber to Commonweal recruits one non-subscriber to the CLC it could potentially double the number of members within a year. For example, if a six member CLC had one member recruit one person every other meeting that would mean twelve members at the end of a year. If we allow that half of those new members would not continue after a first meeting it would still net a nine-member group at the end of the year. 

Circles of Friendship Model

Robin Dunbar's book, Friends: Understanding of Power of our Most Important Relationships, deals with relatives and coworkers, as well as friends that we choose. Dunbar maintains that our number of meaningful relationships is limited both by our cognitive capacity and by time. Dunbar's limit is about 150 which turns up again and again: the average number of people at a wedding, on a holiday greeting list, or in early hunter-gather communities.

Meaningful relationships consist of an inner circle about 5 close friends (e.g. spouse, children) with whom we spend about 40% of our quality social time. We usually see them at least once a week. The total amount of time per month averages about 8.5 hours, the equivalent of a workday. These are the people we can depend upon.

The next circle consists of about ten best friends who are our sympathy group.  These are people whom we generally see at least once a month. We spend an average of 2.1 hours a month with each of these, e.g. a lunch, or an evening, or a small group meeting. These are people whom we expect will aid us if we need them.  Only 20% of our social time goes to this circle. However, when we add these people to our close friends, we have about 15 people with whom we spend the majority of our quality social time.

The next circle out consists of our Good Friends, another forty people, who are our extended "family" and affinity groups such as church, business, or hobby friends whom we see at least once a year They only get 20 minutes a month if we keep in contact monthly with them by phone or e-mail. Personal contact is likely in group events at holidays, etc. However, forty percent of our time goes to this circle. 

Beyond this is another circle of about a hundred friends. These are mostly people we have known from some past social interactions: childhood friends, college classmates, past coworkers, business relationship, etc. These are basically people we do not interact with on any regular basis but with whom we could resume our relationships. These with the fifty people with whom we regularly interact constitutional our social world.  

Where might members of a Commonweal Local Communities fit?  They would be in Friends category if we come to a CLC meeting once a year, and the meeting was small enough, e.g. about ten people so that we might have some quality time with a few people before, during and after the meeting. However, if we attend monthly meetings of the CLC some of the members could become our Good Friends. Depending upon the size of the monthly group meetings we might end up with one or more Best Friends. Becoming Good Friends or Best Friends would be greatly facilitated by regular phone and e-mail contact. In other words, a monthly meeting might make a significant impact upon the network of 50 people with whom we interact regularly. 

Human/Social/Cultural Capital Model

Capital is defined as the accumulation of labor over time in various forms such as money and physical objects. Social science has expanded this concept. Human Capital is accumulation of labor within the human person in the form of physical development, health, skills, talents, etc. Becker who won the Nobel Prize for his work even included virtue. Social Capital is the accumulation of labor in the form of social institutions and their associated social network. Institutions here includes not only parishes but their components such as the choir, the 9:30 Mass. Cultural Capital is the accumulation of labor in the form of shared language, ideas, concepts, books, works of art, music, etc. We should get into the habit of viewing our surrounding as accumulations of labor. Parishes are not simply buildings and bank accounts. They are formed of human capital, various social networks that interconnect around the institutional components, and a whole heritage of cultural capital such as scripture, liturgical texts, music and art. When we close a parish, we tend to destroy much of the labor that has accumulated over years, decades and even centuries. 

Commonweal Local Communities are built around the cultural capital of Commonweal. But that should be only the beginning. Each member brings to the meetings their wealth of human capital in the form of talents, skills and virtue and their wealth of membership in various social institutions and associated social networks such as family, occupational, and avocational institutions. The combinations of all these should make each CLC, and even each meeting unique.

Hospitality Model

Hospitality has been central to the formation of monastic communities. The Rule of Saint Benedict says the guest should be treated as Christ. Even earlier, hospitality was central to the desert solitaries. Although they lived alone, sometimes within earshot of one another, the practice of visiting each other bound them together across time and space as a virtual community. Those visiting a solitary asked for a word of wisdom. The words of other solitaries were shared. Eventually these sayings were collected into books either by topic (cultural capital) or by speaker (human capital). 

The times before and after CLC meetings are important opportunities for practicing hospitality especially allowing members to form friendships by getting to know each other better. In phone interviews of parish bible study group members (which met in groups of 8-10 persons for about 8-10 weeks) they were asked the first names of the members of their group. At four to five weeks, they could name only four or five people. At eight to ten weeks, they could usually name everybody. It takes time to develop cognitive representations of group members.  They were asked if they wanted to stay in the same group next time or move to another group. Most said they wanted both to continue to develop their relations with their group but also to meet new people.  Therefore, hospitality should both deepen existing relationships as well as welcoming new members. The model of having one group member invite one potential member to a meeting is a perfect opportunity both to get to know the new member as well as allowing time for all the members to get to know each other better. 

Virtual Commonweal Local Communities

At the same time that Commonweal began to promote Commonweal Local Communities, it At the same time that Commonweal began to promote Commonweal Local Communities, it abolished the dotCommonweal blog which had been a great source of virtual community since 2006.  The Circle of Friends Model helps us to understand both the benefits and drawbacks of dotCommonweal. There was an inner circle of about fifteen people, most of them contributors, who dominated posts and the conversation. Beyond that were about thirty regular commentators making up about 50 people. In the course of the years there were probably another hundred persons who made one or two comments but did not engage in the regular conversations typical of the circle of fifty people.

About fifty CLCs have formed across the country. Almost all of them probably had at least an inner core of five people.  (That is a total of 250 people already). Many of them might have developed another circle of ten people who participated at least occasionally. (That is another 500 people).  Finally, if each CLC had another circle of ten people who had come only once, that would have been another 500 people. In other words, fifty CLCs could generate a potential 1250 people. Accomplishing that with one Virtual Commonweal blog would be extremely difficult if not impossible.  However, using a blog to add a virtual dimension to each CLC is very feasible. The blogger site for the Cleveland Commonweal Local Community Network was designed to provide information about CLCs for members, subscribers, readers and friends of Commonweal. However blogger allows comments (which may be moderated) and posts by anyone enabled by the administrator.  What might the Cleveland blog look like if these features were all enabled?

Some participants in the dotCommonweal blog did not take its closing easily. At least a dozen of us decided to continue with our own blog. It was up and running within a week! The Circle of Friends Model prevailed. At least five persons posted weekly and commented daily.  Another ten persons posted and commented less regularly. How many people viewed the blog has never been clear. We had as many people actively on a daily basis as the Cleveland CLC had on a monthly basis. The blog did not shut down during the pandemic and continues today. It is a purely virtual blog since none of us has ever physically carried on a conversation with another even by phone. 

We should not think of virtual vs physical as being an either/or question. Rather blogs should be seen as another dimension of community life. The Cleveland CLC network could be a grand virtual community housing various CLCs, e.g. a University CLC, and various parish and households CLC each with their own virtual networks.

 One Time Events Model

Rather than thinking of the Cleveland CLC being a group that meets regularly, one might think of it as a group that provides one-time events that serve subscribers, readers and friends.  

When Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) was active in the diocese it had about 50 members that were spread across the diocese. It had one Parish Voice of about ten members. But approval for its activities by its pastor was often difficult to obtain.  However, the diocesan organization found it easy to convince pastors and Catholic organization to do one-time events in their locations that were attended both by VOTF members and other interested persons, e.g. a lecture, or a Mass for victims. VOTF also piggybacked on lectures and events at other institutions such as John Carroll. The diocesan level organization was run by four people. 

Future of Commonweal Event. Commonweal's hundred anniversary provides ample opportunity to discuss its future. A panel could discuss the Centennial Issue. Perhaps everyone could bring their favorite Commonweal article?  What is the future for Commonweal's relationship to donors, writers, subscribers, libraries, parishes, and schools? And, of course, what might be the potential for Commonweal Local Communities. 

Meet the Author Event. Paul Lauritzen, an emeritus faculty member of JCU has written an interesting article "One Year to Mourn: should grief be considered a medical disorder?"  He and his coauthor are currently collaborating on an edited volume of essays on the medicalization of grief. A brief talk and conversation with him might attract many area subscribers and friends of Commonweal.

Commonweal Parish Communities

Although the Cleveland CLC was not started as a parish CLC it did meet in a parish. A condition was that announcements of our meetings would appear in the parish bulletin and we would be open to participation by members of the parish. We fit well into the parish as is evident in the panorama of offerings from one of its bulletins,

Saint Noel Location

Bulletin announcements did not elicit any responses. However, having a table in the narthex like other parish ministries did elicit some interest but only about three or four persons per  year, just as the Commonweal website. Also, only about half those came only once. If the pastor or some member of pastoral staff had promoted the CLCs we would likely have gotten more members. However, with pastoral staff participation there would likely have been pastoral staff control, e.g. choice of topics. People in parishes are mainly recruited by people they know (e.g. a pastoral staff member) that by advertising. If one wants to start a CLC in a parish without the help of pastoral staff, it might be best to start with people you know, e.g. choir members, bible study members. Since meeting space in parishes is often at a premium, one could start in a home or eating place, then approach the parish once the CLC grows. 

Commonweal Household Communities

My parish had done the RENEW program several times. The last time we had over twenty groups that met in homes. Mine was called "RENEW for music lovers" because I shared my liturgical music collection with the group. My first thought on hearing about CLCs was to have a CLC meeting in my home preceded by music and then followed by music. People could both come early and stay late as they pleased, 

The pandemic has altered our plans somewhat. Covid is becoming seasonal like other viruses. We will likely host people mainly in the months from April through October and likely choose people who do not meet a lot of other people and are supportive of our needs for social isolation. We have ample outdoor space for hosting people.

Saint Gabriel Hours

The Virtual Divine Office blog. Our immediate response to the pandemic was to develop a blog of virtual resources to support our household celebration of the Hours. Within weeks, the Dean of Canterbury began celebrating morning prayer out into the gardens. His celebration with a silent and unseen cameraman assisting went from fifteen minutes to almost an hour and became an internet sensation whose members named themselves the Garden Congregation. We also discovered Saint Meinrad Archabbey Vespers with its very singable psalm tone. Because of their elderly monks they completely isolated themselves. It became our place for virtual Sunday Mass since they sang without masks through most of the pandemic. During the first year of the pandemic a young man in Boston with musical and production skills began singing Morning and Evening Prayers each day. We also found many wonderful video productions of the psalms in all different versions and genres. Finally Word on Fire began a monthly breviary of Morning, Evening and Night Prayer that reads like a book. All this has convinced us that virtual celebrations of the Hours are a development as important as the invention of the Breviary.

The Saint Gabriel Hours blog. Named after Saint Gabriel, the patron of media, that blog announces the good news that anyone with an appropriate electronic device can celebrate the Hours "anytime, anywhere, with anyone."  Virtual resources provide more than the dry bones of the liturgical text. They celebrate the Hours with sounds and images. Most importantly they provide community, both community with those who produced the sounds and images, and community with those who celebrate the Hours with the same sounds and images at various times and places.  

There is a post for Morning Prayer and a Post for Evening Prayer each day. Each post has a YouTube link to complete celebration of the Hour by the Divine Office.org community. Most of these are recited but the Lord's Day hours are sung.  Each post also has a YouTube link to SingtheHours which is a fully chanted Hour by mostly one person. The blog also promotes the Word on Fire monthly Breviary that enables one to celebrate these Hours "anytime, anywhere, with anyone" either with or without an electronic device. Two additional links are provided for hymns, two for the psalms of the hour, and one for the Gospel Canticle and one for the Lord's Prayer. Finally, there are links to the Lectionary readings for the day for those who prefer a longer reading.

Saint Ignatius said that it was more important for Jesuits to spend 15 minutes in quality prayer than hours in mediation, and to spend time dwelling on inspiring prayer.  Modern people like Jesuits should be finding God in all things. Since we can now celebrate the Hours "anytime, anywhere, with anyone" we should not hesitate to use parts of Morning or Evening Prayer throughout our lives. For example, we could begin a CLC meeting with psalms, and conclude it with the Gospel Canticle, some prayer intentions, and the Lord's Prayer. We could do that with our meals, too. The idea is celebrating with other people, whether physically or virtually, using common virtual resources derived from the Hours. 

In some ways the virtual Hours are both the most traditional and the most progressive movement in the Church. We are going back to the early church in which the Hours were celebrated not only in Cathedrals but also in monasteries, house churches, and solitary dwellings in different ways. The combination of sung Cathedral office with psalms became the center of Benedictine life.  Later the mendicant orders developed breviaries to give them greater flexibility, and eventually the Jesuits abolished choir. Therefore, adapting the Hours to changing times has been essential to the Church's evangelization. Since Vatican II has called all Christians to holiness and evangelization it is not appropriate that all of us should be able to celebration the Hours "anytime, anywhere, with anyone."