Revisions to CLC Models

 Thanks for your discussion of my draft

Models for Reinventing Commonweal Local Communities

Below the break are my revisions of three sections.  

I added "spiritual " to the Grassroots Movement Model to emphasize the religious aspect of CLCs They have the potential to be far more than academic discussions groups or social meetings with good company. To help define CLCs as a religious movement I quote verbatim from the Commonweal website. I then viewed CLCs in light of Francis Joy of the Gospel, again quoting verbatim from that document. 

The paragraph from Francis provided me with a great lead into the Network of Communities model. We are all members of many communities and each of them deserver their form of "missionary impulse capable of transforming everything." Just as Francis says there is not one way of doing parish, there is not one way of doing CLCs

Finally in the Virtual Commonweal Local Communities, I tried better to communicate that I want a virtual dimension to CLCs which would be similar to what we have here at NewGathering. In some ways this model should be located right after Network of Communities Model. However, that step would likely be too great for most of the Cleveland CLC members as well as the Commonweal Staff. I use the Circle of Friends model to justify shutting down their blog. On their website they emphasize the decidedly local nature of each CLC. This essay strongly supports that. Hopefully they will understand virtual as a dimension of every community rather than an alternative to local communities. So I want everyone to think of various physical models before thinking about their virtual dimension. Like Francis I am interested in a "missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, but I also recognize the value of small steps. 

What do you think of CLCs as a means of evangelizing the church and the world in the spirit of Pope Francis? That is where I am headed after I see how more people handle this essay.

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.“ And 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.

Virtual Commonweal Local Communities

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.