{"id":1601,"date":"2007-07-19T13:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-19T13:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/07\/our-town.html"},"modified":"2007-07-19T13:38:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-19T13:38:00","slug":"our-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/07\/our-town.html","title":{"rendered":"Our town?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> I’ve got decidedly mixed feelings about Tom Monaghan’s new Catholic town, Ave Maria<\/a>, in Florida. Now it’s getting more attention<\/a>, as it nears completion — or at least, nears the point where people will begin living there: <\/p>\n

Ave Maria has not been without controversy. The Florida American Civil Liberties Union has threatened to sue if the town bans birth control, as Monaghan suggested in a speech. Catholic educators say he could have found better ways to reach out than to create a town where single-family home prices start at $450,000. <\/p>\n

Monaghan, 70, remains steadfast. “Everything I do I think I do for the right purposes,” he says. “I only have to answer to my God.” <\/p>\n

The town and university will operate independently but the Catholic influence is hard to miss. Streets bear names like Assisi and Annunciation. The town center holds a cathedral-size chapel based on a design Monaghan sketched himself. Atop it is a 13-foot-high cross, the highest point in the town.<\/p>\n

The seeds for this $400 million enterprise were sown in 1998, the year Monaghan sold his pizza business for $1 billion and founded Ave Maria College, a liberal arts school in Ypsilanti, Mich. (It closed this year.) By 2000, he had founded Ave Maria School of Law there; it is set to relocate to Florida in 2009.<\/p>\n

In 2002, real estate development company Barron Collier offered to donate 1,000 acres of southwestern Florida farmland for Monaghan’s dream university. He partnered with the company to create a town to support it. He has committed more than $200 million to build the university and invested $100 million to develop the town. Profits from that investment will go to the university. <\/p>\n

Monaghan dismisses questions about whether the town will tolerate non-Catholic views. But he created a stir last year when he was quoted as having said in a speech to a Catholic men’s conference that pharmacies wouldn’t be allowed to stock condoms or birth control pills and that cable TV would show no pornography. <\/p>\n

Monaghan has since said he misspoke. Project manager Donald Schrotenboer says the town will obey all local ordinances, but officials “would prefer” that businesses sell only products consistent with a family-friendly environment. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The idea of a faith-filled town is not unappealing, but this sounds creepily like an upscale Catholic ghetto. Or, maybe, a Catholics-only gated community\/country club. <\/p>\n

The great challenge of living the faith lies in being, to a great extent, counter-cultural, and bearing witness to Christ in a not-always-sympathetic world. But it’s hard to be counter-cultural when the prevailing culture is made up of people just like you. <\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds, and whether it succeeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve got decidedly mixed feelings about Tom Monaghan’s new Catholic town, Ave Maria, in Florida. Now it’s getting more attention, as it nears completion — or at least, nears the point where people will begin living there: Ave Maria has not been without controversy. 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