Tom Monaghan building America's first gated Catholic town

[quaoar]

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/top/features/documents/04761831.asp

It’s a Saturday in March, and Monaghan — founder of Domino’s Pizza, former owner of the Detroit Tigers, and self-appointed savior of American Catholicism — is addressing an overflow crowd packed into BC High’s gymnasium for the first annual Boston Catholic Men’s Conference. Monaghan doesn’t seem like a revolutionary: his voice is gentle, his graying hair mussed, and he leans against the podium for support as he speaks. But his rhetoric is incendiary. Catholic schools are failing, Monaghan announces; on key issues (religious observance, sexual behavior, opposition to abortion), graduates of Catholic colleges and universities are actually less orthodox than their co-religionists who attend secular institutions. The problem is especially bad at elite schools, which are academically rigorous but spiritually impoverished. Yet Monaghan brings good news as well. At Ave Maria, the university he’s building in southwest Florida, things will be different. In a few years, the median SAT score will be higher than that at any other Catholic institution; even better, the dorms will be single-sex, a quarter of the classes will be taught by "wholly orthodox" priests, and students will be urged to become priests and nuns.

Bold talk — but the most dramatic part of Monaghan’s speech is yet to come. Ave Maria won’t be just a university, he continues. It will also be a new town, built from scratch, in which the wickedness of the world will be kept at bay. "We’ve already had about 3500 people inquire on our Web site about buying a home there — you know, they’re all Catholic," Monaghan says excitedly. "We’re going to control all the commercial real estate, so there’s not going to be any pornography sold in this town. We’re controlling the cable system. The pharmacies are not going to be able to sell condoms or dispense contraceptives." A private chapel will be located within walking distance of each home. At the stunning church in the center of town, Mass will be said hourly, seven days a week, from 6 a.m. on. "So," Monaghan concludes, with just a hint of understatement, "it’ll be a unique town." As he exits the stage, the applause is thunderous.

Right now, few people grasp the scope and significance of the Ave Maria project. Monaghan has been well known for years, and his forays into higher education — including Ave Maria University (temporarily located in Naples, Florida) and Ave Maria College and Law School (in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the time being) have received a fair amount of press. But the town of Ave Maria, which may become Monaghan’s most significant endeavor, has gone largely unnoticed. The earnest young usher who greeted me at BC High wasn’t aware of Monaghan’s urban plan; neither, until a few weeks ago, was Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

< snip >

[tk2kewl]

1. send in the pedophile priests

and then close the gate

[Swamp Rat]

17. HAHAHA!!!!

Then we can throw an animal that died from the plague into their well a few days before we roll in the giant wooden badger and begin the siege. :D

[noamnety]

2. Hahahaha

And all the boys will be born straight, the girls will be celibate, and the sheep will be scared.

or something like that.

[quaoar]

3. And there will be no crime

And no teen pregnancy.

And the streets will be paved with gold.

[noamnety]

13. I wonder why they can't sell birth control

Since nobody who lives there would EVER want to use it, it's kind of a silly restriction. Like outlawing brusselsprouts. Why not let supply and demand run its course, like a good capitalist?

[DesEtoiles]

4. "The Village" - fine with me. go there and don't come out.

[DBoon]

5. Tom Monaghan is the new number one

nt

[alarimer]

I immediately thought of that movie as well

All they need is to make up some monster to keep people locked in the 18th Century.

[amandabeech]

6. Are they going to kick out any family that has only two kids after

six or seven years? Oh, I forget, Vatican Roulette is still o.k.

[Cleita]

7. Florida gets weirder and weirder all the time. First Jebby and

his Schiavo fixation and now this. One almost wishes for global warming to make it disappear. (Not really.) I can't imagine anything more medieval or a worse idea. I lived in convents with the nuns on and off when I was going to school and I know what it's like. I can't imagine a whole town of repressed Catholics and the abuses that will come from it like abused spouses being forced to stay forever in that situation. Families with six to a dozen children and even more. Magdalen laundries for bad girls and much, much more.

[delete_bush]

8. wonder if their local Dominos will offer up

fish pizzas every Friday? Yum.

[anitar1]

9. Must be 15 years since I bought a Domino's pizza.

When I found out he was anti-choice, that was it.

[delete_bush]

10. I stopped because the crust

had the taste of cardboard.

[progressivebydesign]

16. Besides the fact that it's pretty garbagey... I don't but it either n/t

[tk2kewl]

19. Find'a the Pope in the pizza...

[PSPS]

11. Sure sounds familiar

It's not likely this "vision" will ever really happen, of course. Such restrictive covenants on land ownership are clearly illegal. But if it did, I wonder how long it would be before the usual combination of the "leader" having sex with ten-year-old girls, and the mass suicide? That's the usual scenario with these things (Waco, Jonestown, etc.)

[Neshanic]

12. Just when you thought it could not get more bizzare...

Our nation of gated Jamestowns. Falwell, a pure protestant community, Dobson Estates, Phelps Hills, Crouch Holler.

Swaggert Valley...now THAT'S gonna be a fun place.

"Honey you know the cable company in Swaggert Valley has 200 channels of porn!"

[quaoar]

20. The cable system in Dobson Estates

will make sure that none of that SpongeBob gay propaganda seeps through.

[Selatius]

14. Let them build it if they want, I say

It's not for me.

Rather than shut out the entire world, I'd rather study it, learn from it, and grow from the experience.

But my way is not for everyone, like these people for instance. Each person ultimately has a choice on this issue, and I'm not going to shove it down anyone else's throat. People believe what they believe, and some believe regardless of what reason or evidence say.

I have no problem as long as they don't use brainwashing and other coercive measures to bring people into this community.

[progressivebydesign]

15. Can we lock it from the oustide???

I'd prefer to keep those crazies inside.. and leave the normal people alone. Nutjobs so afraid of life, when it is THEIR own clergy that are responsible for some of the most disgusting acts of pedophelia... Somehow I think that whole 'cast the first stone' thing has gotten away from that group of people. I haven't eaten a Domino's pizza in almost 10 years.. and damn proud of it!!

[Devlzown]

18. The students will be encouraged to become

priests and nuns. I wonder if Monaghan is celibate.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

21. Sounds like a M. Night Shamalayan (sp?) Script....

Someone ask this guy if I the movie rights are for sale.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

22. Will wimples be part of the dress code?

"the wickedness of the world will be kept at bay". The wicked world that "God" made?

Jesus went out into the "wicked" world and hung around with prostitutes, barkeeps, the poor and the helpless of the "wicked world".

Monaghan must've missed that part of text.

[Don Claybrook]

23. It sounds like

the Currier & Ives version of The Handmaid's Tale.

[in_cog_ni_to]

24. Will the town have their very own pedophile priests too?

Then they can have their very own investigations of the pedophile priests and have their very own jury who can exonerate their pedophile priests and they can raise generations of pedophile priests. Who will protect the children?

GOOD! Stay in your own damn community and leave OURS alone! This is exactly what we need! Let the religious wacko nut jobs live in THEIR own little world and get the HELL out of ours. I like it! I hope they do this all over the country! Please, please, please!

[Melynn]

25. Sounds like a cult to me.

I think that Monaghan is losing his mind.

[recycledindi]

26. good

put a big fence around it and don't let any of them out.

we need more of these.