After half a century of trying to come out of religious seclusion, Roman Catholicism has suffered a setback.  The founder of Domino’s Pizza has accumulated more money than he can manage wisely.  Instead of handling his philanthropy well like the Bill Gates family or Warren Buffet, he is constructing his own community of Catholic seclusion in the relatively far reaches of Central Florida.  Talk about the boonies with bugs and humidity and swamps, this is the place.  Tom Monaghan has ideas of exclusion which are so far out that his representatives have taken to assuring the world that the community will follow the law of the land.  Monaghan is fond of rubbing the red as they call kissing the clergy’s butt in the Church.  It’s one thing to love and respect the priests and nuns and ministers of this world, but hero worship here like with any other group leads to abuses.  This guy has such need for approval in this community that he has gone off the deep end.  He is now a cult in himself presenting himself as the face of the Church
The Church hierarchy has been forced by its lay members to moderate its public stance that all non-members are heathen in order to survive.  In the meantime, the congregation has joined society as kin with non-Catholics.  The members of the church have intermarried and produced children with non-Catholics.  It’s apparent to all with common sense that this has turned out wonderfully.  Catholics and non-Catholics for the most part are responsible, lovable humans worthy of the best life and the hereafter has to offer.  Religious beliefs are for the most part un-provable in this life so the hereafter is a matter of conjecture, sometimes explained in logical terms and sometimes emotionally.  Belief is an opinion and the differences are just a debate, nothing more.  We all, Catholic and non-Catholic alike,  have the same basic understanding in common of what makes a decent human being.
Tom Monaghan appears to be a religious zealot like those running the far reaches of Islam and other religious extremists.  The nature of this man has been shown by his work at Dominos where he built an empire from scratch.  That level of acquisitiveness is unusual among men and there’s no reason to be surprised that he has taken the Howard Hughes route as he ages.  He works to gain the approval of others and, in this case, the approval he seeks comes from the highest level of Catholic clergy.  Certainly this group has no interest other than retaining their status as leaders of the Church as long as they can and Tom Monaghan is just a tool to do so.  Since Monaghan is solely reliant upon their blessings, he has no balance and in this case just resembles a nut job.  How could he do otherwise when his approving elders are strained off-center and live a monastic life that eventually drives all of them bananas?  There is no other explanation for the billions that the church is paying out in supposed retribution for the past acts of the clergy other than they are in a layman’s terms crazy at the time they acted so hideously.  If he follows their teachings in toto, Ave Maria will just wind up being an expensive enclave of unproductive sun baked wackos like others throughout the country.
Monaghan appears to be a man who can change directions when he sees that he is on the wrong path.  We all witnessed his abandonment of the luxuries of life in an earlier stage of his life.  He has now seen what his billions wrought in Ave Maria and he has a chance to reflect on the worth of this development.  His efforts at this time are not worthy of his capabilities and he should reflect on the alternative possibilities.  There are many more worthy than Ave Maria and of more lasting benefit to the Church.  In the future, he should listen also to the members of the congregation for his approval needs and not just the opinions of those clergy in the tower of power.  He may find that he will receive more wisdom and long-lasting benefits from the laity than from the pastors of the community.                            

Be Sociable, Share!