AVE MARIA: A MAN-MADE CATHOLIC FLORIDA TOWN, CREATED BY A PIZZA BARON



 

…This is the giant cathedral at the center of the Catholic Florida town of Ave Maria.

 

Former Florida Governor, Jeb Bush supports Domino’s Pizza founder’s Catholic town and all of its restrictions.

Who would have thought that I would ever need to write an article about the separation of church and state in America?

Well, today, there is a town in Florida that its description will make everyone think that they are back in Andy Griffith’s hometown of Mayberry, USA. 

Yep, there is a town where, “children ride their bikes to school, walk to the candy store and scooter their way to the ice cream shop. Where neighbors are friends and life is good. Where everyone enjoys life as it is meant to be lived."  Well, that’s what the town’s founder says and that founder is the Domino's Pizza founder and former Detroit Tigers' owner, Tom Monaghan.

The name of the town is Ave Maria, Florida, and it was founded as an unincorporated "stewardship community district" in 2005.

Florida's governor at the time, George’s little brother, Jeb Bush, had attended Ave Maria's groundbreaking and dubbed it as, "A new kind of town where like-minded people live in harmony between faith and freedom."

…The former Florida Governor, Jeb Bush

So, let’s take these comments by the former Florida Governor regarding “faith and freedom” and see what is meant by these two words.

For Mr. Monaghan, the founding of Ave Maria was from his intention to create a city "according to strict Roman Catholic principles." As Monaghan sees it, this would mean that the town’s stores will be unable to sell pornography, the pharmacies will be barred from selling condoms or other forms of birth control, and cable TV will not be allowed to carry X-rated channels.  And that’s exactly what the rules are in the town of Ave Maria.

This made-up town quickly became an issue for civil libertarians, secular humanists and those who believe in the availability in town of many religions.  These individuals have a host of questions about church-state separation in Ave Maria.

 (I’m bring this issue up today because if Jeb Bush does decide to run for president in 2016, this will become an issue in the 2016 election campaigns.)

The concerns about Ave Maria surfaced after an article in www.Catholicstand.com hailed the town's religious foundation. The exact comment in the article was, "This small town used to be 1,000 acres of tomato plants and has been transformed into a college town with modern amenities and a very distinct religious lifestyle . . . Catholic culture is apparent everywhere, in street names such as Assisi, Avila and Cana . . . The entire town was built around and revolves around the center: The Oratory."

Ave Maria is a dream come true for Mr. Monaghan.  This is his lasting legacy that honors his commitment to conservative Catholicism.

In fact, the creation of Ave Maria followed his 2010 pledge that the now-77-year-old Monaghan took at the suggestion of Microsoft billionaire, Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett. The idea? To give at least half of his fortune, estimated to be at $485 million, away before he dies. His first step was building the Ave Maria School of Law in 1999, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  But the school was moved to Florida in 2009 to be closer to the newly formed Ave Maria University in the town.

Unlike Jesuit or more-liberal Catholic academies, Ave Maria University (AMU) is run "according to the guidelines of the Code of Canon Law."  This is a system of laws and legal principles that are made and enforced by the Catholic hierarchy.  The school has twenty-eight majors including Catholic Studies, Early Christian Literature, theology and Greek.  Mass is offered three times a day on weekdays and four times on Sundays in the town’s giant Cathedral. School tuition and expenses are very high estimated at $27,686 a year.

As an interesting side note, according to inputs about the forming of the law school, the activist US Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, had "significant input" in developing the law school's curriculum.  The ultra-conservative and anti-abortion Congressman Henry Hyde was also on its first board of directors.

Due to the strict Catholic foundations, both the law school and the university programs have had trouble attracting and retaining students. The town of Ave Maria however, is slowly moving toward its target of 11,000 residents.

Needless to say, the ACLU, has a big issue if any government authority will be transferred to a religious organization or whether the community will be governed by religious rules.

One of the issue that is causing some serious problems is the issue of health care for the community.  Initially, Naples Community Hospital was in negotiations with Ave Maria to open offices in town.  In the end however, Naples Community Hospital did not open a satellite operation in Ave Maria. The reason? The health center's refusal to restrict the availability of birth control, abortion and abortion referrals. 

There were a lot of big questions when the subject of health care first came up.  As an example, “Would medical care would be dictated by religious rules?”  What if someone with a “Do Not Resuscitate” order had an accident of some kind? Would the hospital respect the order? What advice would a rape victim get? What kind of referrals? Would the raped woman have access to information about abortion or emergency contraceptives if she asked for them?

For the time being, the ACLU is keeping a close watch on Ave Maria, looking for violations of church-state separation and other infractions of law. "There's a fine line between respecting religious liberty and respecting the Constitution," concludes the ACLU’s executive director.

Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said, "Historically, one of two things typically happens in places run by religious denominations. First, outsiders often move in and change the character of the area. Secondly, these communities tend to tear apart on their own by internal dissent."

Frederick Clarkson, a senior fellow at Political Research Associates, notes that the issues surrounding church-state separation and religious freedom remain somewhat thorny. "A guy like Tom Monaghan does not get to rewrite the Constitution in accordance with his religious or political viewpoint," he says. "But a bunch of people can get together to form an intentional community. The question then becomes to what extent can a person give up his or her individual rights? In the town of Ave Maria, people need to see what's in the fine print. Are they giving away something that is not anyone's to take? Are there restrictions on free speech? Can you publish and distribute a newspaper that criticizes Tom Monaghan or the Catholic Church? For me, the real question is one that Thomas Jefferson asked:

‘Are you as free to go out of a church as you are to go into one? Or are you a captive of the company store?’ "

Needless to say, the devil is lurking in these finite details.

Copyright G.Ater  2014