AmericanPapist Comments
There are two problems here. One is that Monaghan's vision appears to be bigger than his wallet. The other problem is that turning the vision into a reality - and maintaining it - currently depends on one person, Mr. Monaghan. It shouldn't be that way. Making authentic Catholic education (and other authentic Catholic institutions) a reality should depend on all faithful and orthodox Catholics. If this were the case, there wouldn't be a problem maintaining the Michigan campus, while establishing the Florida campus at the same time.
That said, this should not be a time for divisiveness. While much in the NYT article may be true, Ave Maria needs our support more than ever. The article tries to make it all about Monaghan. It's not. It's about Ave Maria and Catholic education.
That said, the NYT is not exactly a friend of conservative Catholics and the article's intent is probably more to harm than to help. I'm sure they want to see Monaghan and Ave Maria fall flat on their face. I hope they don't get what they want, because it isn't just Monaghan that's going to be hurt.
I know of what I speak. I was a student at the St. Ignatius Institute from 1980-1983. The Univ. of San Francisco finally managed to subvert it after more than 20 years of trying. In that case, it wasn't a lack of funds that was responsible for its demise. A lot of people got hurt with the loss of SII.
For what it's worth, I will continue to send my donations to Ave Maria. The donations that would have gone to my Jesuit alma maters, will go to Ave Maria instead. I think Ave Maria is one of the best things going in Catholic education right now and I don't want to see it fail.
P.S. I had no idea you were Edward Peter's son. (I've exchanged emails with him a few times.) No wonder I like your blog so much! :)
Glad to meet you Master Peters. I've read about the difficult situation of Ave Maria College. It is sad to see all of this discord among the orthodox faithful. I join you in prayer for the restoration of peace and harmony.
I graduated from St. Mary's College of Ave Maria University in 2003.
As far as the future for Ave Maria in Naples, I would like for it to work. But I agree with the blogmeister.
I don't get Ave's fund-raising letters ... I'm not considered an alumnus. I don't miss the letters.
Thomas, I've heard there's like 2 students left at Ave in Michigan. Is that accurate -- will there be an Ave in Ypsi this year?
Oh, dear! What a terrible thing-- and, to tops, the NYT probably having designs of sowing the discord deeper too. However,if I amy add, I disagree with Kate Cousiono's response to start an alternate alumni-group--- whether or no, Catholic education still remains as a big problem in America, and anywhere that a good response happens needs to be encouraged :). I agree entirely with the first commenter of this blog. Let us all pray for them.
Let us all keep them in our prayers. When I graduate from college 2 years from now, if the Ysi campus still survives, I think I will try myself to support it financially.
And, nice to meet you, Mr. Peters. I actually emailed your father about canon law school some time ago:D. From what I've seen (which is not much, so busy am I with school), Dr. Peters' blog rocks like yours! Do you have any sisters that blog?:)
It's hard to keep up with my Dad and brother, so I don't blog yet:-)
So the blogging Blossers aren't the only father/son bloggers in St. Blogs after all.
Just to clarify - the journalist who wrote this article is a freelancer, who did her best to keep it balanced. Unfortunately (for balance, that is), Monaghan and co. were very uncooperative. I spent several hours speaking with Ms. Hanson, and have faith in her lack of anti-catholic prejudice. ;-) Leave us not be entirely paranoid about the NYTimes.
Oh, and I didn't found the alumni group. I was around while it was birthed, but moved to LA shortly afterwards, and have no offical attachment to it (other than being a member alumni). And while not wanting to be harassed by donor letters from an institution that resembles the one I graduated from in name only is, as I told Susan, one incentive to form an alternate organisation, being able to include non-graduates and former faculty who are no longer in Healy's good graces in our events was a stronger motivation. We had a unique experience at AMC in Michigan, one which we would like to preserve and treasure untainted by the chaos and discord that surrounded the euthanising of the school.
And for the record, while I don't have the confidence in the administration or the desire to support AMU Florida, I do frequently pray that God will preserve all the good he can in that enterprise, and save it from the egos and agendas of men. I'd like to see it succeed...but I have a bad feeling about it, considering my own experiences of the men at the top.
In the meantime, there are several proven, faithful, and excellent Catholic Colleges (and even a few Universities) that could use our support and have no scandal or incompetance attached to their names - Christendom, FUS, TAC, to name a few.
BTW, glad to see you emerge from anonymity, Thom. I expect to see much more come of that name in the future.
I think its a bad idea to blindly support any institution that calls oneself Catholic. Whether its Ave Maria University or Notre Dame. I think every institution should be subject to reasonable criticism, after all, if taken the right way, it could improve the institution. So I urge you to look into things before giving money, support, etc.
That being said, in the interest of full disclosure I also know all the folks quoted in the articles and the discord at Ave Maria caused my own family a great deal of strife. I myself have forgiven the wrongs committed and I honestly say that I hope and pray much good will eventually come from Ave Maria.
I used to work for Mr. Monaghan. Not directly, but I worked in his organization, down the hall from his office actually. I ran in the Ave Maria circles for the year that I lived in Ann Arbor. The problem is Tom's ego. He's a classic case of an orthodox Catholic (and I'm an orthodox Catholic, so don't take this the wrong way) who thinks that "might makes right". I mean, who NEEDS a 1,000,000,000 foot tall cricifix on top of a chapel??? With Tom everything has to be bigger and better THAN HAS EVER BEEN BEFORE. And it has to have HIS name on it.
I don't know. I'm definitely ambivilant about him. On one hand he's done a LOT for the Church both at home and abroad. On the other hand, there's his ego which is extremely distasteful. I worked for his organization for a year but the few times I was in his presence he never made eye contact with me...not even the very first time I met him when I introduced myself and told him I had moved all the way to Michigan to work for his organization. I was told he's just shy, but you know what? That's an excuse for children, not for a grown man who is facing a 28 year old young woman who just told you she left her home, job, and friends to work for YOU because she loves the Church.
Sorry, I'm just not impressed with Mr. Monaghan.
J.D. Aquila said:
"I think its a bad idea to blindly support any institution that calls oneself Catholic. Whether its Ave Maria University or Notre Dame. I think every institution should be subject to reasonable criticism,"
Amen! I'm so glad someone said this. I get so frustrated at good Catholics blaming the media, blaming liberals, etc. Come on. We need to be DISCERNING and that means no one is off the hook.
Living a few blocks away from Ave Maria College means that I am certainly sad to see it go. A vibrant Catholic intellectual life in Ypsilanti will be sorely missed. I still very much hope that Ave Maria University is a big success. I actually think it will be. There is a sufficient hunger for orthodox Catholic teaching right now.
they ought to have tried to interview alumni of AMU, who went to michigan as well.
It's a delicate situation, by all means, but that major oversight is an indication of a lack of balance already.
wondrousp - She did. I referred her to several, and I know she spoke to at least one at length.
But those students, for their own reasons, requested anonymity. The editors required that all references and quotes be linked to a name, so Ms. Hanson was unable to use those interviews.
Believe me, Ms. Hanson tried to make things as balanced as she could, given the reticence of so many connected to AMU to say anything at all.
That even alumni of AMU are afraid to let their opinion go on record is pretty damning, I'll admit. But the reporters supposed bias is not what ends up looking damned, if you know what I mean.
What was really disheartening for me was when Susan told me how impossible it was for even an investigative journalist to find out any financial details surrounding the funding, fundraising, and real estate end of the town. People - Catholic faithful - are being asked to invest their money in a private financial development that has zero transparency or accountability.
There are over 30 of them. Speaking to one who won't give up annonynimty hardly counts.
I say this because I am a graduate of AMU, though I transferred there from another school, just after all this scandal was coming out, and after the ave parents site was established. And I took a long hard look at all the facts, and statements, and the situation. I'm not saying AMU is perfect--it's far from it. But I judging from what I have read, and my own experience, the article failed in two major respects:
1) it failed to get an AMU student/alumni side of things (a good inverstigate journalist would continue to search for a source who wasn't afraid to speak out. I'm not afraid to talk about AMU, to judge it, even to criticize it, in the proper sphere). Another aspect of this was not interviewing any of the many faculty that did willingly go down to Florida. There were plenty of the to talk to as well. (I'm not blaming Miss Hanson entirely either--I feel certain that the NYTimes is only interested in slandering something that goes against the secularism of their worldview. Let's face it, if they knew about AMC, we can be fairly certain that they had no sympathy for it, no matter how unjust the actions taken against it were. When does a newspaper insist on no annonymous sources? I've never heard of such a thing. But the result was a mainly onesided article, no matter how just Miss Hanson endeavored to be.)
2) truly it is old news. All that stuff about Ave and AMU and the library and the funding and everything happened a long time ago. And I'm not trying to belittle it, or say it's not important to those who suffered from it. But I think that to bring it up at a time like this, so long after the fact, and have that be the first article from the NYTimes about the school--well that's hardly fair. There's plenty to talk about and to criticize and to report on about AMU and AveTown. But the ad hoc argument against Mr. Monaghan, and the decided interest in one side of an old story would cause me to wonder at the credulity of the story, even if I did not know better from my own experience.
Firstly - It's not the first NYT story on the school/town. That would be the infamous "City on a Hill" story about Monaghan's Catholic enclave.
Secondly - didn't you know current faculty are by school policy barred from talking to reporters, except when ordered to by the school? I can send you a current copy of that policy, if you like. I would presume Ms. Hanson spoke with the pr contact.
If I had had your phone number to give Ms. Hanson, I would have. I gave her numbers for the AMU students/grads that I had. I highly doubt the pr/press department of the school was interested in giving out contact info for alumni to a journalist.
I think you're missing my point here:
It's an old story. Don't you think it does much more harm to Catholic Higher Education in America to still be angry about this than to unite in a front against the liberal bias in media, on campuses, and in education in general?
There is some truth to "all publicity is good publicity" and there isn't. A secular person who reds this will see one thing only: a bunch of crazy catholics who can't get their act together, so they are still aruging, and harming their ultimate cause.
I'm not saying that you have to support AMU financially. But I do think you should try to get over this, try to understand and forgive AMU, and it's administrators, and faculty. I've seen things like this tear apaprt countless catholic organization (none of them so public as AMU), and sever bonds that ought to be united. Such rifts among catholics does us all great harm.
Being taken in by every organization and institution that calls itself "Catholic" regardless of its actions or treatment of others is not particularily helpful for the Catholic commmunity either. Look, in this day and age, everything makes its way to the eye of the public eventually. You only have a couple of choices - be part of the cover up (and thus, the greatest part of scandal) or be part of the constructive search for accountability and transparency.
This isn't old sour grapes - this is public accountability for people that have no private accountability, who have abused their position of trust in the Catholic community. Although it would never occur to me to go outside the community looking for publicity, I wasn't about to refuse to talk to Ms. Hanson when she called me.
Look, I agree that Catholic infighting is harmful. I've often shook my head at the way that different pro-life organisations compete for money and tear each other down as a result. I don't think we ought to air petty grievances publicly.
But this isn't petty. Either Ave Maria solves its governance and transparency issues - and builds a solid foundation on which to thrive - or its fruits will be a rotten as its roots, and the school will survive only as a whited sepulchre, if that.
You see, I want the mission of the school to succeed as much as you do. Possibly more - I know that we should not suffer evil so that good will result (Dr. Riordan and Van Shaijik taught me that). I will not stand silent so that the fundraising of the school succeeds even as its integrity crumbles. I would rather see the edifice fall and countless souls be saved the disillusionment and abandonment of bad governance and inevitable betrayal.
I know this sounds dramatic, but email me and I can tell you of some of the cost in souls caused by the administrations relentless focus on finances and forced growth over spiritual verities and human dignity.
wondrouspilgrim,
Not sure what you mean by it being an "old story" happening a "long time ago." Ave Maria College just recently closed, and Ave Maria Town/University's success in Florida is currently uncertain. Most obviously, Ave Maria Law's future is now at issue. These are current events, and to those who are not aware of the extent of the difficulties at Ave Maria institutions, it is not old news.
To underscore Thales point - this is ANYTHING but an old story. Just days ago, the AMC Dean of Students was given an ultimatum by the President of AMU (note - the President of AMU, not AMC): recant your testimony on fraud/abuse given to the Inspector General of the Dept. of Education (the DOE's law enforcement wing) or you have no job and no housing the following week.
This was mentioned in Saturday's Wall Street Journal and documented, by the Dean, on Fumare yesterday.
So, those who think that this is just an isolated case need to become acquainted with the facts. Monaghan ignores not just Catholic social teaching, but also basic norms of secular decency, in his own internal operations. He may also be ignoring the law (as in criminal conspiracy and blackmail).
Does the Church say teach in my name using dirty means? I think not.
Monaghan is an embarassment to orthodox Catholics everywhere.
I can see that Mr. Monaghan has some rough edges (as the article mentions, driven people often do). Perhaps these could be toned down.
But... It might be too soon to write off Ave Maria University or the town of Ave Maria. Mr. Monaghan has demonstrated to a very high degree that he knows how to use both capital and human recesources efficiently.
In the business world, his skills yielded a phenomenaly high return on investments. Though starting a University and a Catholic based development project are not entirely similar to the business world, they do share some aspects in common.
A comment about your top page today, and this funny definition you've put there : "American: n. A native or citizen of the United States". Don't you think America is quite a bit bigger thant the US? From Europe, it seems like US represent not more than a third of your great and various continent...
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