The left-wing British Catholic newspaper The Tablet wades into the Ave Maria U wars with a snarky report that breaks no new ground. In fact, it continues some of the inaccuracies previously reported in other places and since clarified.
Don’t get me wrong. There are aspects of the Ave Maria situation that can be criticized and I have no wish to wade into the AMU/AMC/AMLS wars, being a disinterested third-party without all the facts at hand. Yet, sure we can agree that the debate is not helped by secularists and dissidents hurling condescending insults at conservatives for their old-fashioned ways and idiosyncratic desire to hold on to what’s old and outdated.
The whole lede of the article posits that Florida is a place that Americans think they can go out and invent Paradise on earth and this is why Monaghan chose it for AMU. A nice try on the Tablet‘s part, but no cigar. Monaghan chose Florida only after his proposal to build it in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was shot down by the city there and this plot of land in Florida was what came up as affordable and in a locale amenable to the project.
And while there is some legitimate dispute about whether Monaghan actually said that stores would be banned from selling contraceptives or pornography in Ave Maria Town and that the cable system would limit certain channels, I find it interesting that a purportedly Catholic newspaper would find limits placed on the sale of contraceptives or pornography to be worthy of ridicule.
Who is David Gibson?
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“The silent majority, which agrees with me, thinks…”
Yes, if they’re so silent, how does he know what they think or that they’re a majority?
“Thus it was not unusual, for example, to see colourful adverts for Domino’s Pizza bolstering the beige pages of Fr Richard John Neuhaus’ journal First Things. “
Is this even true? It would be funny if it were, but I would like to hear from an early subscriber. The ads sure don’t appear anymore, and of course Monaghan isn’t in control of Domino’s now.
“Colorful” is an multivocal term, but one has reason to doubt this description since First Things generally publishes only in black and white now, and I doubt it ever could afford much color.