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.