The challenge of solidarity is the challenge to care for those with whom we have connections. Because we’re human. In the age of social media that is essentially the whole world. That’s an extraordinary thing isn’t it. When my grandmother was first back from India where her father was working, she wrote to him – and she got a letter back weeks later. And now she would be Facetiming him! And the fact that I’m in a WhatsApp group means I know a great deal more about the eating habits of my latest grandson. And thus the culture of sensing loss must be developed not so as to paralyse us before the endless suffering of human beings, but to call us to belong to one another.
A friend of mine, a bishop in the Congo, was asked about the number of refugees in the area where he lives. He said: “Oh, around two million.” When I asked him how he coped, what he did in the face of such unmeetable needs, he said, “We do what we can, what God enables us to do.” That is as good a definition of solidarity as Donne’s.
Solidarity is a value which resists gross inequality but seeks for the gain of others so that all may gain. Despite Donne’s words about a bit of Europe going missing, he is not being called in aid of resistance to Brexit, but rather of commitment to finding a new way in which as a country we are bound to the rest of the world.
And finally, another word, far more spoken of than acted on, is subsidiarity. The principal is simple. All actions and decisions in any group or organisation should be taken at the lowest possible level, at the most local level. It sounds obvious, but everything militates against it, especially our growing capacity in information technology and in systems.