Monaghan’s slice of heaven — in southwestern Florida

February 21, 2006

Every once in while, some conservative will come up with an idea to get thousands of like-minded friends together in one place, where everyone will agree, and a collective sense of religious “values” will dominate, whether outsiders like it or not. Usually, these efforts always seem to fail — the Christian Exodus drive didn’t take over South Carolina and a libertarian initiative to take over New Hampshire with 20,000 activists only drew 100 people.

Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan, however, seems to be making progress in executing his own vision of a Catholic heaven on a 5,000-acre tomato field in southwestern Florida.

Reaching 100 feet in the air behind a 65-foot crucifix, the Oratory will anchor Ave Maria, a whole new town and Roman Catholic university 30 miles east of Naples. Ground was officially broken last week, and the plan is to build 11,000 homes — likely drawing families who already hold the church at the center of their lives.

For Tom Monaghan, the devout Catholic who founded Domino’s Pizza and is now bankrolling most of the initial $400 million cost of the project, Ave Maria is the culmination of a lifetime devoted to spreading his own strict interpretation of Catholicism. Though he says nonbelievers are welcome, Monaghan clearly wants the community to embody his conservative values. He controls all the commercial real estate in town (along with his developing partner, Barron Collier Cos.) and is asking pharmacies not to carry contraceptives.

It’s not quite the mini-Afghanistan theocracy the Christian Exodus campaign had in mind, but it’s a little alarming nevertheless. Not only will public pharmacies in Monaghan’s utopia face restrictions, but the local community hospital says it will not prescribe any birth control to students. Asked if anyone would be able to get the pill, a hospital spokesperson said the answer “is probably yes, but not definitely yes.” What will be the next restriction mandated from above? We’ll see, but no one thinks Monaghan will stop at contraceptives.

The goal, it seems, is to create a de facto all-Catholic town, with limits on personal freedoms based on Monaghan’s views of religious doctrine. It sounds like the kind of project that will keep lawyers in southwestern Florida busy for quite a while.

For that matter, as my friend Mark noted, Monaghan’s crusade may backfire.

My prediction? Every kid in Ave Maria will grow up to become a lapsed Catholic. Nothing breeds contempt like forced conformity.

So true, so true.

What is amusing is that self-selecting religious communities is what brought the original colonists to America (except for the debtors’ prison of Georgia). Maryland was to be Catholic. Plymouth was founded by Puritans. So on and so on. America was a dumping ground for intolerant religious communities that did not want to live in an Anglican England (or some other European country, the Pennsylvannia Dutch from Germany, for instance.).

Strangely, by the time the founding fathers got together to create a new country out of all these seperate colonies, they either realized that they were so diverse that they could not create a national church, or they saw the effect of religious isolationism that they just rejected it (except for John Adams, apparantly).

So now we have re-isolationist movements in America. Should we not let them go? It would seem to be for the best. But one of the problems with a community created on the basis of intolerance is eventually, some new issue arises to break the community apart (extremist Mormans, for instance). You then end up with smaller and smaller divisions trying to maintain some forward momentum.

The problem is, the more sure you are that your are right, the more alone you end up being.

  • As long as Ave Marie (that dirge still makes me shudder after years away from the church) doesn’t receive a single cent of taxpayer money and they obeys state and federal laws, who cares? I look at it as a case of “dry” and “wet” counties in southern states. If the residents and students want or need contraception, there’s nothing to stop them from going to a pharmacy or doctor in a nearby community.

  • “there’s nothing to stop them from going to a pharmacy or doctor in a nearby community.” — prm

    Just the county sheriff’s department stopping them at the county line. Something I can easily visualize.

  • Is this in the part of Florida that’s going to be under water once the ice-caps melt?

    Just asking.

  • I think this is a great idea–then those of us who value our freedoms know exactly where these clowns are and can keep closer tabs on them. Also, prm beat me to it–they can do whatever they want as long as they fully self fund each and every service they offer. Their roads? They pay 100% without any state or federal funds. Their schools? Their garbage collection and disposal? Their water/gas lines? Their telephone/cable/electric lines? Their sidewalk repair? Ditto. Every aspect of keeping htat place and its infrastructure in shape, operating and clean? Ditto. Something tells me that their community will not be able to afford all of this, though.

  • Oh I dunno – you’d be surprised how eager most “small-gov’t” “anti-tax” conservatives will pony up the bucks for “home owner’s association dues” to keep their little neck of the woods safe, clean and secure…thekeez

  • something tells me that “home owners association dues” for a community that will likely be over 50,000 people, will pretty much break them. May work well for 100 to 1000 people, but getting over those sorts of numbers one is talking really big bucks. Totally left off fire department and police department as well. and a service department.

  • Ed:

    priestly pedophiles (not pedifiles

    Umm, that should be paedophiles – pedophiles are foot-lovers.

  • Bubba,

    Where I live (Whatcom County WA) there have been at least 3 county-level secession movements by the rubes who can’t stand being associated with a university town (Bellingham). The movements actually made some progress during the 1980s, until they were informed by the Secretary of State that (1) they couldn’t create the county by having meetings (only the state legislature has that authority) and (2) if the counties were formed they would have to pay their own way (they couldn’t continue to milk the urban areas as they are now doing). All three movements collapsed over night.

  • It occurs to me that any time intolerant people would sooner hem themselves into a small community and keep me out, rather than ship me (or others they find offensive) off to a ghetto or worse, I say woohoo. This is a good deal for those of us who want to keep doing what we’ve been doing, but with less assholes in our midst.

    As for restricting businesses, well, the business shareholders and owners have a choice about this. If they go into this community for the bucks, and accept the restrictions, it will be annoying but not shocking.

  • Since Ed brought up our trolls, I will share with everyone the latest information which I have “data mined”.

    I would appear that bogie was so adamant about not being the poster over at the TheHighRoad.org because his true identity could be determined there if one was patient and determined enough. Well, I was both. Let’s just say he shouldn’t have posted his letter to Hooters protesting their policy on no concealed weapons.

    I won’t reveal it all, since I respect his privacy. However, there is no harm in revealing first names. His is Chuck. From bogie’s personal information I was able to find information on his dad, waumpuscat. His first name is Claude.

    Anyway, Bogie is a Reagan era military public affairs officer. Am I the only one that thinks that it showed in his stubborn refusal to face facts?

  • Now it’ll cost more to put up that family planning clinic nearby. And with strict religious birth control practices, they’ll really need one. People who use the rhythm method are usually called “Mom and Dad.”

  • And when the next Cat 4 hurricane barrels through and wipes them out, will they conclude that God was pissed at them?

    Just wondering…

    (PS- isn’t this basically the Catholic version of Utah?)

  • It is interesting to watch the Balkanization of our national fabric. Red and Blue states have very different world views and now we have red and blue towns and even red and blue pharmacies.

    I strongly resent being subjected to government by a majority (nation, state, or city) with oppressive red state values, and I worry about our nation is becoming.. a “democracy” of people who don’t share the requsite common agreements to have a shared common good.
    .
    Just like election outcomes in Palestine… and Iraq… Having democratic elections and institutions does not equate to having a working democratic government.

  • Re #13 – Rege, you rock!! That info is worth its weight in gold and the home phone number of my favorite waitress.
    Thank you so much!! 🙂

  • Rege- The troll family values… concealed weapons at Hooters
    Thanks for your patience and determination.

  • I grew up in a 98% Catholic neighborhood in exurban Detroit and that was very common in the 50’s and 60’s. Good luck finding enough Opus Deis to populate this stepford town. They don’t meet, marry and procreate like regular Catholics do. We had great diversity in my parish and life did revolve around the parish and school. We had familes from different European ethnic backgrounds and ran the gamut in socio-economic groups. It was a great place to grow up but it was like a small town. Everyone knew who you were and who your parents were and they called if they thought you were doing something wrong. And while the parents were mostly alike in values, they were diverse in politics and interests. They were mostly first generation Americans who had gone through the depression and war. Very fair, honest, kind, helpful, tolerant people. There were some real characters and we celebrated that. This new community doesn’t sound anything like that. It sounds very fundamentalist and intolerant. In short, very anti-Catholic. You can throw a lot of money at projects but that doesn’t translate to success. I often wonder what Monahan’s problem was. If I’m not mistaken, he started his pizza business in Ann Arbor, a bastion of liberalism and it was very good to him. He got very cozy with the conservative cardinals in archdiocese of Detroit (after Cardinal Dearden) and maybe it went to his head. Southeastern Michgian used to be pretty liberal. But I guess if you become super rich, you forget your roots.

    I have yet to meet a Catholic of reproductive age who doesn’t use birth control let alone abstains from premarital sex.. We are not going down the same road as our mothers. Does Tom really think that they won’t patronize a drug store outside their little community. How is he going to explain the small families? Most Catholics wouldn’t have an abortion but that’s where the indoctrination stops. He really ought to put his money to good use and support the aged religious. The orders are going broke and don’t have the money to support the elderly religious in their nursing homes. He could build a whole town for retired clergy and religous from independent to nursing home living.

  • SWMBO – the Poster Girl for “Lapsed Catholic” – says that your friend Mark is dead-on accurate: “nothing breeds contempt like forced conformity.”

    BTW, Lance – not all of original-colonial America was founded by the religiously-intolerant looking to advance their intolerance. My Quaker ancestors (aka “The Pennsylvania Dutch”) arrived here in 1680 as refugees from the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, during which the Protestants would take a town and kill all the Catholics (and the Quakers), only to have the town taken by the Catholics, who then killed all the Protestants (and the Quakers) – they were in fact quite tired of religious intolerance. In fact, Pennsylvania – founded by the Quakers – was the first colony that proclaimed religious freedom and didn’t impose a sectarian test for membership.

  • Rege (#13) and Angelina (#19), Excellent posts in all respects.

    Firefall (#10), yours was clever, too, and I enjoyed the joke. However, I must defend myself. TCR, so far as I know, doesn’t permit Greek fonts (in which I could write “ae” combined, as would be proper), so I followed the dictionary practice of spelling it “pedophilia”. You would be correct about the foot fetishists, except I find no such listing under that word, and true classical scholars abhor words formed by combining a Latin root (ped- vs. the Greek pod-) with a Greek one (-philia) — jars the ear, don’tcha know. For that reason, among others, I usually refer to my own professional field as “demography” rather than “sociology”.

  • Re: the trolls –

    Waumpuscat is old enough to have a child (Bogie) who is old enough to have been in uniform under Reagan (in other words is somewhere in his mid/late 40s)???

    Wow, I was convinced with both of them that we were dealing with a pair of 13 year olds who decided to give us grief while they were hiding under their beds after being chased home from school every day.

    Hmmm… on further thought, I still think that’s what we’re dealing with – psychologically for sure.

    Further proof if proof was needed that some Southerners need to be prevented from marrying their sisters through too many generations.

  • Rege, a finer reponse to trolling I have never seen. Grinning and laughing are taking turns. That is f’n hilarious that you nailed them like that. Right on.

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