How a Small Church in Iowa Became a Catholic Worker Destination

This past weekend, Catholic Workers gathered at the Sugar Creek Retreat Center near Prescott, Iowa. For three days, they held roundtable discussions, shared communal meals, performed skits, sang, and prayed, surrounded by corn fields and the rolling hills of eastern Iowa’s Driftless Area.

Catholic Workers gather in front of Karl Myer’s Peace Van at the 2024 Sugar Creek Gathering.
“Karl Myer being Karl Myer,” as Frank Cordaro puts it.
The 2024 Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering. All photos in this gallery are courtesy of Frank Cordaro.

The “retreat center” mostly consists of an aging two-story brick building and a large outdoor shelter. But for most of the past 47 years, it has been home to the Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering, often referred to simply as “Sugar Creek.” Despite the name, the gathering regularly draws people from farther afield, as well as people who are not formally attached to a Catholic Worker community but who are interested in the movement.

About 75 people came together for the 2024 gathering last weekend, according to Eric Anglada (St. Isidore Catholic Worker Farm, Cuba City, Wisconsin). Roundtable topics included: “Grieving Processes,” “Community Song Circle,” “Mutual Aid,” “Crafting,” “Where are we seeing God and hope in our lives and work?”, “Advice for Young Activists,” and “Attracting people to the Catholic Worker.”

The first Sugar Creek gathering was held in 1978 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Davenport Catholic Worker. The Davenport Catholic Worker was founded by Margaret Quigley in 1973. Quigley had considered joining new Catholic Worker houses in Chicago but made her way out to Davenport, Iowa, instead.

The Davenport Catholic Worker grew fast. In five years, they took over both parts of a duplex and moved into another house on the block, which they named Peter Maurin House. Several years later, they bought a farm.

In the summer of 1978, the Davenport Catholic Worker invited Catholic Workers from across the Midwest to join them at Sugar Creek.

“Come, help us celebrate at a pot luck supper, Sunday, 3, September, at our farm in Sugar Creek,” they wrote.

Before email and desktop publishing, the invitation for the Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering went out by post on a hand-lettered postcard. In later years, Chuck Trapkus (Rock Island Catholic Worker) would send out elaborate illustrated maps directing people to the retreat center. Photo courtesy Catholic Worker Archives at Marquette University, via Renée Roden.

The community had rented an acre of land from St. Joseph Parish, paying a small rent and a portion of the utilities.

Brian Terrell (Strangers and Guests Worker in Maloy, Iowa) was at that first Sugar Creek gathering in 1978. He was visiting from New York City, where he was volunteering with the New York Catholic Worker; the next year, he would move to Iowa to join the Davenport Catholic Worker.

At the 2023 Sugar Creek gathering, he shared some of that early history.

“We had about an acre of garden here, and we could come up here and stay in this building and do our gardening and canning. We could stay the night or just come up for a day, or sometimes people from our community would come here for a week or more for a kind of retreat and quiet time. At that time, the Davenport (Catholic Worker) House was feeding at least 40 people twice a day in a standard American kitchen, which you couldn’t do that and can tomatoes at the same time,” he said.

Brian at the 2023 Sugar Creek Gathering.

“So, we would come here for a day or two and can all of our tomatoes or make our pickles. We had a nice kitchen, lots of space, and when the Catholic Worker at the time in the Midwest wanted to gather, it seemed like a natural place to be. The very first years of it, there were a lot fewer of us, and there were no kids.”

For much of the Catholic Worker’s history, young people would join for a year or two before moving on—much like today’s “gap year,” he said. But then people started staying in the movement, raising families in their communities—and bringing those kids along to Sugar Creek.

Gallery: Click on images for larger view. All photos are from 2023. Courtesy Jerry Windley-Daoust.

People generally camp on the lawn in front of the retreat center and church.
A large, open shelter hosts meals, roundtables, and the Saturday evening talent contest.
The 2023 Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering featured some square dancing.
Sunday morning prayer.
The cemetery attached to St. Joseph’s Church.
A song circle was held in the gazebo at the 2023 gathering. The statue of Mary bears a slight resemblance to “Football Mary,” the statue that for many years was the prize awarded to the winner of the annual talent show.

Another thing that has changed is the attitude toward Catholic Worker farms, he said. “At that time, a lot of Catholic Workers thought we were being self-indulgent by gardening: ‘Food comes from Dumpsters!’ Well, now we know it comes from gardens.”

Betsy Keenan, also of Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker and Terrell’s spouse, said that the Davenport Catholic Worker never owned any land on the property.

“We had an annual lease agreement about using the little rooms as the back during their visits to work in the garden, and the large kitchen that formerly housed the school kitchen for their canning and preserving of produce,” she said by email. “The parish used the building for their religious ed. program, parish social events and at least one big fundraising dinner each year.”

Eric Anglada has helped coordinate the gathering in recent years. The gathering, typically held on the second or third weekend of September, is “somewhat informal, somewhat planned,” he said. Participants engage in introductions, fellowship, roundtable discussions, prayer, communal meals, and even lighthearted entertainment in the form of skits and songs. The gathering usually draws “old timers” who attend almost every year as well as first-time attendees.

“It’s just a great mix of all generations,” Anglada said. “We had someone here who was 92 years old.”

While there is a large house with a bunk room and a few private rooms for elders and families with young children, most attendees opt to camp in tents. The gathering’s approach to meals epitomizes the movement’s ethos of hospitality and sharing. Communities and individuals bring what they can, often excess produce from their gardens or farms. “We’re bringing produce, we’re bringing milk, we’re bringing meat,” Anglada explains. “So actually, we’re eating really well.”

A large, covered shelter serves as the central gathering space, where most of the weekend’s activities take place. The timing of the event in mid-September usually means the weather is nice: sunny days in the seventies and cool evenings, perfect for outdoor roundtable discussions.

The people of St. Joseph Church have always been generous in their hospitality to the Catholic Worker, Keenan said. Catholic Workers were, she said, “the guests of the parish, blessed with a share of the bounty that the people there had received from God and their forebears to pass along to those in need in the Quad-Cities.”

“There were some years where I was the liaison between (the church and the Catholic Worker), and of course in every parish group like that there is a range from the most cautious to the more open, experimental types,” she recalled. “I think they have really given the movement a great gift and dealt with our large, unruly and unpredictable group most kindly!”

An earlier version of this story appeared in the Roundtable newsletter. Jerry Windley-Daoust contributed to this story.