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Vacuous words and phrases are a telling feature of our contemporary political pathology. John Torode in TheArticle  selected a number of “worn out words” and detailed their misuse. The

saddest, often poured like ketchup on shallow relationships, is “community”. Saddest because community is a deep human need. Humiliation, alienation and lack of belonging are poorly

disguised behind frequent use of “community”. A true understanding of community, and therefore how to nurture it, is essential for a healthy political culture. Today, almost any grouping of

people with a single common characteristic is at risk of being called a community: the scientific community, the community of plastic bag manufacturers, the immigrant community, help save

the hedgehog community (I must declare an interest here), the European Economic Community (before it became a somewhat disunited Union). Any group can become a victim of stereotyping. It is

a short step to treating their common character trait as inherent or to make sweeping negative generalisations about a particular group; this is what is generally meant by racism.  Even if

we resign ourselves to the portmanteau nature of that word “community” we encounter a second problem: group identities obscure the many individual differences found among members of a group.

I remember a Muslim friend whispering to me during an interfaith discussion: “I wish sometimes I could just be me and not always the Muslim woman.” I imagine a Catholic bishop might

secretly feel the same. And if we view cultural difference in a pluralist society only in monochrome rather than in its technicolour reality, community relations will remain stuck in a black

and white picture of exclusion/inclusion and integration/separation. But perhaps we make things worse by asking the wrong questions. People believe that when talking about community,

however vaguely, they are referring to a good thing, something desirable. But we are aware of exceptions. Not all communities are a good thing — we know they can be oppressive, coercively

enclosed, violent places. So why not, as the stereotyped Irishman is credited with saying, start from somewhere else? Ask instead what kind of behaviour, which virtues, are required to

create _good_ community, the sort of community we want to create when we emerge from Covid and its restrictions. What constitutes and creates good community? Working together for the common

good is one key. Sociability flows most easily from hands to heart to head. Schools and universities require much professional expertise and organisation for the flow to be in the opposite

direction: head to heart to hands. To be recognised and acknowledged, above all to contribute and to be needed, are fundamental human needs that, when realised, build community.  The loss of

community caused by unemployment is so intense that euphemisms are used. People are “let go”. “Made redundant” too accurately describes the painful reality. The devaluation of low-paid

labour is deeply divisive. As the American political philosopher, Michael Sandel, says, there is a deep problem when the idea of the common good we carry in our heads, and how to achieve it,

is defined by market mechanisms. No wonder that societies and nations rooted in individualism and consumerism, their citizens striving for self-sufficiency and self-mastery, find the

creation of a common life so difficult. Another key to community is historical humility, shared memory and the disposition to learn from the past. Is there anything we might learn from past

conscious efforts to create community? In his recently published _The Way of St Benedict_, about the founder of Western monasticism,_ _Rowan Williams looks as far back as the sixth century

for guidance. It’s a short book with long sentences; in a chapter on “Benedict and the Future of Europe” he asks: “In the half-secularised, morally confused and culturally diverse continent

we now inhabit, does the Holy Rule still provide a beacon for common life?” And then the former Archbishop of Canterbury argues cogently that the Benedictine Rule does indeed have something

to say to us. A not so surprising conclusion for viewers of “The Monastery”, the memorable 2005 TV reality series, which followed a group of people – several without any religious

convictions — spending time with the monks of Worth Abbey.  Benedict’s Rule, aimed at building and sustaining community, picks out honesty, accountability, transparency, the peaceful

resolution of inevitable conflicts, and stability as the necessary virtues and features of monastic life and the characteristics of a good Abbot. Lord Williams argues for their contemporary

salience as political virtues for governance. For instance, honesty “is not simply the matter of being transparent about your expenses (although that helps). It has something to do with

whether or not society expects in its political class a degree of self-criticism and self-questioning.” He also underlines the responsibility of civil society. “An honest society ought to be

able to guarantee the possibility for those in public life to acknowledge fallibility or uncertainty”, he writes. And in political leadership Rowan Williams seeks “stable and nurturing

habits”, omitting — with Christian charity — to add how alien these political virtues seem to the present Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Remarkably, St Benedict’s guidelines do still speak

to our contemporary condition. “Good governance and government,” Rowan Williams writes, “is always about engagement with the other, a developing relation that is neither static confrontation

nor competition, but an interaction producing some sort of common language and vision that could not have been defined in advance of the encounter.” Where are dialogue and constructive

interaction to be found? The grim reality is that our political culture seems the antithesis of what Benedict proposes for sustaining a harmonious, stable community.  _The Way of St

Benedict_ was published last year. It performs an important task by invigorating and making meaningful again the worn-out, but essential, word “community”. And as our intellectual horizons

disappear in a haze of slogans, deceit and half-truths, perhaps we can learn from the sixth century how to restore them.  A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s

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