America is turning into Iraq

The balkanization of America has begun. We already have some evangelicals talking about making a separate Christian country out of South Carolina. But if you buy Domino's pizza, you're helping to subsidize a Catholics-only town in Collier County, Florida:

In late March, at the first annual Boston Catholic Men's Conference held at Boston College High School, Monaghan, a major conservative philanthropist, triumphantly told the enthusiastic crowd of more than 2,000 men (including over 80 priests) that construction of Ave Maria University -- the first Catholic university built in 40 ¬years -- was moving forward.

The 240-million-dollar first phase will be centred around the "Oratory of Ave Maria," a 60,000-square-foot church with aluminium and glass arches, and will include the nation's largest crucifix in stained glass with a 60-foot-high bleeding Jesus. The church would become the largest fixed-seating Catholic Church in the nation, with room for more than 3,000 worshipers.

Students enrolled at the new university in southwest Florida would be high quality students, Monaghan said, with higher median SAT test scores than those attending other Catholic institutions. He also pledged that dormitories would be single-sex and that teachers in at least one quarter of the classes will be "wholly orthodox" priests.

Grander news, however, awaited the crowd as Monaghan then launched into a description of a new Catholic-centred town that was under construction alongside the university. While there are no plans to name the town Monaghanville, or MonaghanWorld, it is clear that Monaghan's vision is writ large over the new town, called Ave Maria.

"We're going to control all the commercial real estate, so there's not going to be any pornography sold. We're controlling the cable system. The pharmacies are not going to be able to sell condoms or dispense contraceptives," Monaghan told the crowd.

At the Ave Maria web site, the university and town are described as "a new community of uncompromising quality and boundless opportunity." The site makes no overt reference to the town's religious mission.

The project evidently grew from plans Monaghan began developing in 2002. His Ave Maria Foundation brought the Naples, Florida-based land developer, Barron Collier Companies -- which donated the land for the project -- on board to carry out the construction.

The complex, located less than 30 miles from Naples and the beaches of Collier County, "is a visionary community with a strong commitment to preserving the area's significant environmental resources as well as its rural and agricultural heritage," the web site noted.

The first phase of the project will be "open" in the spring of 2007, and by 2016, the town and the university is projected to have a population of 30,000.

I wonder if they're going to have their own police and fire departments, and their own wells, filled with holy water as well. Are they going to have their own doctors and hospitals, or are they going to use their clout to put pressure on Collier County medical facilities to run in a Catholic manner (read: no abortions, contraceptive prescriptions, and when in doubt, let the mother die)? Somehow I don't think this so-called "town" is going to be self-sufficient enough to not live off the public teat. But it's OK to take pagan, heathen government money, as long as you can live in a bubble that you think is holy.

Skywind, you live in that neck of the woods. Over to you.