The Cleveland Commonweal Local Community has not met since the beginning of the pandemic. For three years before, the community consisted of about ten individuals who have come to more than one meeting, about another ten who came only once, and another ten who never came to a meeting at all.  Every time I asked people who were not among the first ten, they still wanted to remain on the mailing list.  In our last year we usually had about six people at each meeting (not always the same six). 

I have not heard anything from any of the members or from Commonweal about CLCs for more than a year.  Ellen Koneck, their original staff member for CLCs left Commonweal for about a three year period and is now back with the title of Executive Director.  Does she have a mandate to renew CLCs? 

The link is to a draft post which I intend to send to the thirty people on the mailing list, and also to several people at Commonweal.  With my three years of experience in Cleveland and now going on six years of experience in this blog, I hope to challenge everyone to rethink the idea.

Reinventing Commonweal Local Communities

What do you see as the potential value of Commonweal Communities?

I think that depends a lot on what one wants in a community. Parishes as well as Commonweal use the word "community" when in my viewpoint as a sociologist they are not communities. They are, for the most part, not what sociologists call a primary organization like the family (and some small villages) where everyone knows everything about each other. Generally, our church organizations focus on religion, occasionally on family life, but not much on work or professional life.  My experience of real community has been when work, professional and civic have also been very important. 

What are the strengths and weakness of the original Commonweal Local Community Model? How might they be remedied?

While I think Commonweal is an extremely important in providing a values-oriented approach to the totality of life, I don't think CLC members need be limited to subscribers or even Catholics.  If I were still involved with the mental health system, I would not hesitate to invite fellow staff members or consumers to a discussion of a particular article. Someone once described me a one person think tank. People who received such an invitation, especially consumers, would likely feel honored that I wanted their opinions.  I think I could have used it within the mental health system to start of network of people interested in talking about the issues of the day, e.g. environment, climate change, migration, etc.  

As of 2018 Cleveland had 165 Commonweal subscribers with an e-mail address. While I think it would be a daunting task to recruit many of them into people who come to monthly meetings, I think Commonweal should allow their local communities access to the local e-mail list.  

If you were a Commonweal subscriber in a metropolitan area, what would it take to get you to come a meeting occasionally, assuming a thirty or forty-minute drive there and back?

COMMONWEAL HOME COMMUNITIES

The great potential of Commonweal is that anyone who is a subscriber can start a Home Community in their own home, or restaurant, or meeting place in a local library. The family, friends, neighbors, colleagues that you invite do not need to be a subscriber. They have five articles free each month. As a subscriber, one has access to the whole digital backlog. 

Why continue to let our social networks be organized by churches, and other organizations? When people who participated in the parish RENEW program met in my house, they tended to become life-long friends. A major part of that was my liturgical music collection which made a deep impression on everyone. I think Commonweal could be an equally powerful catalyst for a Home- based social network. 

COMMONWEAL VIRTUAL COMMUNITIIES

What if Commonweal Local Communities were also virtual communities. How might this work?  I am open to your suggestions, especially since most of you seem to comment at other places. How would such virtual communities avoid the incivilities of other blogs.

A first simple step for our Cleveland CLC blog would be for me to grant posting rights to anyone of our present members who requests it.  I think there are also options in blogger to limit who can comment and even who can see the blog. 

I guess I would like to see posters for the Cleveland Virtual Community to be limited to people in the metropolitan area. However, I am open to allowing comments from members of other Commonweal Virtual Communities.  If Jim were a poster in the Chicago community, I could become a commenter but not poster in the Chicago Community but provide a link to a post of mine in the Cleveland Virtual Community in response to his post.

I like being both national and local at the same time, i.e. having a variety of conversations around the same or similar topics in a variety of places.  I think the national Commonweal Community would be greatly enriched by 50 local virtual communities each having five to ten regular posters across a variety of topics.