Tom Monaghan's Strangle-Hold on Women in the Town of Ave Maria

Now, the Town of Ave Maria, Florida is not your normal town primarily because Tom Monaghan and his developers lobbied, and got, the Florida State Legislature to pass a law that Monaghan wrote which allows him and his developer to govern the entire town forever.

Governor Jeb Bush signed Monaghan's bill into law in 2004.

The law Monaghan wrote, that Florida State Legislators passed and Gov. Jeb Bush signed, turns the town from a normal town, with a mayor etc., to a "Special Interest" town whereby the landowners have zero say in the laws Tom Monaghan enacts.

The Naples News reported http://www.naplesnews.com/...

The law makes landowners, not registered voters, the ultimate authority in Ave Maria. The law ensures Monaghan and Barron Collier Cos., as the largest landowners, can control Ave Maria's government forever. (emphasis added by me)

The law allows the executive committee, controlling the votes of the largest landowner, to choose at least three out of the five seats on the board forever. (emphasis mine)

MONAGHAN: "We'll own all commercial real estate. That means we will be able to control what goes on there. You won't be able to buy a Playboy or Hustler magazine in Ave Maria Town. We're going to control the cable television that comes in the area. There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town. If you go to the drug store and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception, you won't be able to get that in Ave Maria Town."

Currently, there is no drugstore in Ave Maria, Florida.

Internal memos from before the law was enacted, show that Monaghan's intent was to own control over the land forever.



" ... we could control it in perpetuity," wrote Tom Sansbury, a Barron Collier Cos. vice president, in the memo.

Monaghan began strong-arming employees and students to move there [Town of Ave Maria, Florida] from Michigan. This led to scores of firings, a federal investigation, $259,000 in revoked financial aid, and a half-dozen lawsuits totaling roughly $2 million.

Now, remember, Monaghan's corporation owns the one and only church in town so, he gets to define "orthodox" and he gets to set the rules the church follows.

Miami News Times reported that Marielena Stuart was a devote "orthodox" Catholic who, upheld the Vatican's Ex Corde Ecclesiae. But, Tom Monaghan thought the Ecclesiae was too liberal so he eliminated it and when Stuart complained, all hell broke lose for her and her family.



Stuart, a conservative Catholic writer and blogger who resembles an aging Elizabeth Taylor, explained she felt like she was being watched from all angles. She had been banned from nearly 1,000 acres of the town for asking inconvenient questions. Now she was afraid to even step into her own church for fear of being arrested.

Katherine M. Ernsting who was fired for cooperating in a Department of Education investigation of Ave Maria's use of student-loan funds. Ave Maria was improperly using at AMU Florida funds that had been granted to AMC Michigan.

A jury in Ann Arbor awarded Kay Ernsting almost $418,000 Wednesday, plus attorney fees and interest, saying the college violated state law designed to protect employees who reveal wrongdoing in the workplace.

In an e-mail Monday, Fessio wrote that his second firing stemmed from criticisms he expressed privately last November to AMU Board Chairman Jack Donahue about the university's financial footing.

Fox News reported in 2006

Tom Monaghan, the founder of the Dominoâs Pizza chain, has stirred protests from civil rights activists by declaring that Ave Mariaâs pharmacies will not be allowed to sell condoms or birth control pills. The townâs cable television network will carry no X-rated channels.

The Herald Tribune

Stores will not sell pornographic magazines, pharmacies will not carry condoms or birth control pills, and cable television will carry no X-rated channels, he [Monaghan] said in a speech last year to the first annual Boston Catholic Men's Conference.

Monaghan and Barron Collier will control all commercial real estate in the town and could include provisions in leases that restrict the sale of certain items.

...

Naples Community Hospital, which plans to open a clinic in the town, will not prescribe any birth control to students [of Ave Maria University]. The hospital has not decided whether it will prescribe to the general public.

Apparently Jeb Bush saw no problem with denying residents their civil liberties:

Gov. Jeb Bush, at the university's recent [2006] groundbreaking, lauded the development as a new kind of town, where faith and freedom will merge to create a community of like-minded citizens.

Oh well ...

Tom Monaghan's Strangle-hold of Women at Ave Maria University

Dress-Code for Female Employees

In 2010, Tom Monaghan mandated that females working at Ave Maria University could no longer wear slacks or pantsuits and could only wear skirts.

Affordable Care Act

Ave Maria University (AMU) is already exempt from the conception mandate in Obamacare but, because they are exempt, they must notify Health & Human Services (HHS) of their exemption so that HHS can make certain that students and employees of AMU can get, if they so choose, contraception at no cost what-so-ever to AMU.

But, AMU allege two main positions:

1) If AMU notify HHS, then they are culpable of "morally wrong" behavior,

2) Even if AMU are not the ones paying for the contraception, it is "morally wrong" for them to notify HHS.

Lawyers for Ave Maria University just filed a Motion with the Court that, in part says:



Ave Maria believes that any action specifically intended to prevent procreation including contraception and sterilization is morally wrong.

any action specifically intended to prevent procreation including contraception and sterilization ...

Taken at their word, it also means Ave Maria University does not think women should even be able to deny sex during her fertile period, which means no "rhythm method." So, apparently Tom Monaghan does not agree with the Pope, who sanctioned the "rhythm method" in 1951.



In 1951 Pope Pius XII sanctioned the rhythm method as a "natural" method of regulating procreation. In 1955 over 65% of Catholic women surveyed said they used Rhythm.

It also means men should not "pull out" right before orgasm.

Ave Maria lawyers pretend that just telling the government they are exempt and who their insurer would be "morally wrong."



It also cannot participate in any scheme . . . to facilitate access to artificial contraception, sterilization, or abortion, or related education and counseling, without violating its deeply held beliefs, even if those items were paid for by an insurer or third party administrator and not by the University. Id . Â¶ 38.

(emphasis added by me)

Ave Maria University lawyers go on to say

Delivery of either document [Form 700 or written] would obligate the insurer to provide Ave Maria employees with payment for the same products and services it cannot provide directly. Regardless of the delivery method, Ave Maria would still be arranging for this coverage and facilitating payment by another entity. Id . Â¶Â¶ 56-57. From Ave Mariaâs perspective, arranging for coverage and causing its insurer to provide payments for abortifacient and contraceptive products and services is no different than providing access directly. Id . Ave Maria would still be complicit in what it believes to be a grave moral wrong. Id . Simply put, Ave Maria is religiously opposed to any effort by the government, through whatever mechanism, to take over its healthcare plan for purposes of the Mandate. (emphasis added by me)

Key Facts about AMU owner Tom Monaghan

The key facts about Ave Maria University's owner, Board of Trustee member, Tom Monaghan are extremely disturbing. The fact is, Tom Monaghan wants to ban contraception for all women, regardless of their religion ... Tom Monaghan wants to have a strangle-hold on all women, not just his employees.

Tom Monaghan explains that his mission and goal of Ave Maria University is to rid the United States of 'liberal Catholics'by the year 2077.

... "liberal Catholic"

From reading what Monaghen says, it appears Monaghan defines a 'liberal Catholic' as: a Pope, Cardinal, Bishop, Archbishop, priest, nun, or parishioner who does not follow his personal definition of "orthodox."



MONAGHAN: "The payoff will be the influence we will have had on the other 200-and-some Catholic, so-called Catholic, schools in the country. Hopefully we can be a beacon to bring them back to their roots." (emphasis added by me)

Under Monaghanâs plan, the seven-year-old university with more than 700 students will by 2077 produce 4,000 good priests 2,500 nuns, 400 top notch theologians, 8,000 teachers for U.S. Catholic schools, 1,500 school principals and 40,000 strong Catholic marriages which will in turn produce 150,000 children and 500,000 grandchildren.

Sure it (division in the Church) bothers me, Monaghan told The Catholic Register while visiting Toronto May 11 to speak to members of Legatus, the organization of Catholic business leaders he started. It's something that didn't seem to happen in the '40s and '50s.

MONAGHAN: It's almost like, in a sense, you had no religion with the so-called liberals. And the orthodox have lived the faith, believed the faith and they're growing. The ones who don't believe anything, they're fading away. A lot of their leadership is gone. The new bishops are stronger and more orthodox, I would think we are gaining more.

And, to Monaghan, it is the so-called "liberal" priests and "liberal" Catholic Schools who are dividing the Catholic Church.

Monaghan, sort-of, explained that Catholic priests & Catholic Schools who do not think and behave the same way he does should just leave the Church. Although, I'm not sure the Catholic-Money-Counters are too hip on seeing their coffers dry up.

Monaghan told the Catholic Register:

The culture war between liberal and conservative Catholics in the United States is not a good thing, but it will only end when liberal Catholics embrace conservative principles or leave the Church entirely.

Archbishop Lori is chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Historically, Archbishop Lori appears, through his own actions, to really have a loathing for women ... and ... other social minorities as well.

Archbishop Loris' 3-year Investigation of U.S. Nuns

Archbishop Lori is responsible for the Vatican's three year investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which is the largest association of Catholic nuns in the United States.

In 2009 Lori was pissed that nuns were not as vocal as Bishops in demonizing: women who dare to think they can be priests, women and men who use contraception, women and men who are homosexual.

As a result of his anger at nuns, Lori flew to Rome and met with Cardinal Bernard F. Law - who, was whisked away to Rome in 2002, after church documents were revealed he, as Archbishop of Boston, had covered up sexual abuse committed by some Catholic priests within his archdiocese. (Still scratching my head on why he was appointed Cardinal in 2004).

Lori convinced Law to thoroughly investigate the nuns. In 2012, thePope issued an eight-page letter condemning the nuns and require they pay less attention to feeding the poor and more attention to demonizing: women who want to be priests, woman/men who use contraception and women/men who are homosexual. the Vatican accused the nuns of promoting "radical feminism."

Archbishop Lori gets to hold Court with a US House Judiciary Subcommittee

In 2011, Archbishop Lori also urged Congress to pass three bills that would go "along way in" controlling women.



Protect Life Act (H.R. 358)

Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 361)

Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (H.R. 1179)

In that same US House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing, Lori called for a congressional hearing or other investigation into "the illegal conditions that HHS and USAID are placing on religious providers of human services." He said new statutes might be necessary "to create new conscience protections, but more likely to create private rights of action for those whose rights under the existing protections have been violated."

The State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is increasingly requiring contractors, such as Catholic Relief Services (CRS), to provide comprehensive HIV prevention activities (including condom distribution), as well as full integration of its programs with reproductive health activities (including provision of artificial contraception) in a range of international relief and development programs.

Under this new requirement, of course, some of the most effective providers helping to prevent and treat AIDS in Africa and other developing nations will be excluded.

Well, there you have it, the Ave Maria University's strangle-hold on women goes way beyond suing Obamacare. Tom Monaghan dreams of the day that he can control the lifestyle of all women, not just his employees.