Catholic Worker School

Having hosted some Catholic Worker friends last week, this information may be of interest. If you would like to receive periodic updates on this project via email, there is an email address at the end of this post:

After months of discussion of what it would mean to start a Catholic Worker School, Rick Mihm and Mary Moody of New Hope Catholic Worker Farm, just outside of Dubuque, Iowa invited us to move to Dubuque to start the project here. And now the four of us are at Hope House, the Catholic Worker in downtown Dubuque, with Rick, Mary and their kids out at the farm.

At some point perhaps we'll have a website for this thing, but for now I've set up an email for those who are interested in dialoguing more about what a Catholic Worker School would look like. The six of us - Mary, Rick, Lee, Megan, Miranda and myself - are now regularly meeting to form a cohesive community together and to begin to develop a mission statement, or manifesto as some have been calling it. We want to be as conscientious as possible to not go too fast and not get in over our heads. We are hoping to send out that statement in the near future. Megan and Miranda are both working the restaurant scene right now, so jobs are on our mind. But we're also looking for donations. We will be sending out a note detailing how much money we need for this structure.

Our hope, this year, is to begin building a structure at the 33-acre New Hope Catholic Worker Farm that will serve as both a house and school structure. This school idea is in many ways rooted in Peter Maurin, CW co-founder, and his vision of an agronomic university, offering an integrated way of life. By 2008 we are thinking of starting a CSA - Community Supported Agriculture, where anyone can buy a share into the farm and receive fresh, organic produce weekly. We also want to balance this with study, prayer, and discussion - the worker-scholar ideal that Maurin always longed for. We would host student guests for a period of time to come and learn practical skills, as well as to get into a vast array of other topics: Catholic Worker thought, biblical studies, art, literature, theology, politics, and on and on. Everyone would be a student, and those that felt like being a teacher could develop a curriculum. It's difficult to say precisely what this will be since not only are we in the first stages of what this vision will look like, but it will be anarchistic, not in the chaotic sense of course, but there will be no leader who tells others what to do. A top-down affair is not what we're after. The shape of each session will vary according to interest. Your feedback on this could help us immensely in articulating the reality of a Catholic Worker School.

At some point, perhaps as early as this summer or fall, we will host a school session. This first session will help us see what works and what doesn't and work creatively from there. We will keep you posted as to when that will happen.

For now we are settling in, getting our bearings, walking the steep bluffs, working on our newsletter, doing hospitality for a family as well as a daytime drop-in, hosting two open meals a week and dialoguing as much as possible about what this strange School idea will look like. We hope that others are as excited as us about starting this project! Please be in touch.

In peace,
Eric Anglada, Lee Jankowski, Megan Starr, Miranda Duschack, Rick Mihm and Mary Moody
1592 Locust St.
Dubuque, IA 52001

CatholicWorkerSchool (at) gmail dot com