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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.                          Â
1 user commented in " Ave Maria is just another home for religious nut cases "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackLet me begin by saying that I’m an evangelical, with no connections to the Catholic Church. Let me continue by saying that I couldn’t disagree more with this ignorant article, and would like to raise four points.
First, it is nonsensical to claim that the Catholic Church has been religiously secluded. It is the largest religious organization in the world with well over a billion baptized members, in every country you can think of, with an unrivaled intellectual tradition. Moreover, it has been on the forefront of “inter-religious” dialogue for about 2000 years. Calling it religiously secluded is ridiculous.
Secondly, perhaps Mr. Burns is critical of Mr. Monaghan for staying devoutly Catholic instead of being nominally so. In which case his idea of religious seclusion would be to have any strong belief at all. Indeed, Mr. Burns goes on to say that belief is just an opinion and no more than that. I suspect that Mr. Monaghan (and anyone with a hint of reason) would reply that the real question at hand is whether or not Catholic beliefs are true, not whether they are popular, or fashionable, or in step with secular society, or “secluded”. Beliefs are not just opinions, they are beliefs about facts, about true or false propositions. To think otherwise is to seriously understand the whole issue.
Third, as to the issue of what makes a good person… again, I find Mr. Burn’s view to be untenable. He thinks that Catholics (and orther Christians) can agree with non-Catholics about what it means to be a decent human being. I beg to differ. In secular society being a “decent human being” can include killing your own children (abortion), watching copious amounts of pornography, using drugs, committing adultery, fornication, and all manner of ummentionable moral perversion, et cetera. So I would have to object, and say that we certainly do not agree on what makes a decent human being. Which is why living in a town like Ave Maria, with like minded moral families, would be very attractive even to a Non-Catholic like myself.
Fourth, and lastly, it is wrong for Mr. Burns to be critical of Mr. Monaghan for wanting to found a Catholic town for two reasons. (a) Practically every city in Europe, South America, and much of North America were founded as Catholic towns, so why should anyone think this trend should stop? (b) Thanks to religious freedom in this country people are free to live how they please, including being free to live as devout Catholics. For Mr. Burns to want to restrict the freedom of Catholics and non-Catholics to build and live in a Catholic town is to deny basic freedom of religion.
There’s so much more to say, I don’t even know where to begin. What an ignorant article.
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