Religions for Peace - USA

Religions Working for Peace and Justice

Monday, July 23, 2007

America's New Catholic Town

You might have read over the last year or so about how Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan decided to create a Catholic town in Florida. Well, this past weekend the town, called Ave Maria, has finally opened. The town, located east of Naples, Florida, includes a cathedral sized chapel at its center, a Catholic university which will take up about 1/5 of the town’s 5,000 acres, and, eventually, 11,000 homes. Every aspect of this town is influenced by Catholicism, even the streets have names like Assisi or Annunciation. The founder wanted this town to “reflect a faithfulness to Catholic teachings that they do not see elsewhere.” This of course draws controversy because of the issue of the separation of church and state.

AOL Video also has an ABC news clip about this town, and what I found interesting was that one of the town’s residents said that he wouldn’t mind if they had a gay neighbor.

Also, the Florida ACLU has threatened a lawsuit, since the town’s founder has said that there will be limit on the selling of condoms and other forms of birth control. Normally, I would be really against the idea of doctors/pharmacies not allowing access to birth control, but in this case I'm not so sure how I feel.

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posted by Alicia @ 11:18 AM  

1 Comments:

  • At 3:21 PM, Blogger Sarah Moskow said…

    This is a very interesting story, Alicia. I hadn't heard about this before, so thank you for posting it! I also have mixed feelings about a "Catholic town." While I generally support a strict separation of church and state, I wonder whether or not Ave Maria is actually a violation of that separation. If non-Catholics were not allowed to live in Ave Maria, that is one thing, but that does not seem to be the case here. It seems like whoever wants to live in that kind of community is free to move there. In this sense, it doesn't seem much different from any other community. There are very few Jews living in my town, but that doesn't mean that they are forbidden to do so, just that they have to accept that kind of environment if they choose to live there. In Utah, for another example, there are few people who are not Mormon, and much of the atmosphere of the state comes from the people, the vast majority of whom are Mormon.

    I guess the question becomes whether or not the federal government and/or State of Florida give funds to Ave Maria that goes directly towards the building of a church, or to pay teachers who will be teaching Catholic doctrine in public schools, or paying police officers who will be on patrol at religious events.

    This is an interesting case, as it makes one question where the line is between free choice and separation of church and state.

     

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