Non-Catholics may apply
Friday, March 3, 2006
The Naples Daily News
Ave Maria officials have decided it’s time to set the record straight.
There’s not going to be a special cable provider that doesn’t carry X-rated channels.
The town isn’t going to be a Catholic utopia, where only practicing Catholics are welcome.
And no one is dictating what can or, in the case of Ave Maria, can’t be sold within the boundaries of the town.
“What we’re trying to do is build an open, inclusive community,” said Blake Gable, project manager for Barron Collier Cos. “Some (reports) would lead you to believe that this is going to be an exclusively Catholic community. I’m not Catholic, and I’ve been spending the past four years on this project. But it is a community based on family values.”
As first reported Thursday night on naplesnews.com and Bonitanews.com, there will not be any legal restrictions of contraceptives in the town of Ave Maria.
“It is critical to note that no restrictions will be enforced on contraceptives or any other inventory,” Ave Maria University founder Tom Monaghan and Barron Collier Cos. president Paul Marinelli said in a joint statement Thursday. “In fact, we are using the same lease for Ave Maria as the Barron Collier Cos. use elsewhere in Collier County, which prohibit certain uses that are inconsistent with traditional family values. Neither will there be restrictions enforced on programming on cable television.”
A recent Newsweek article said Ave Maria leaders were asking pharmacies not to carry contraceptives, and pharmacies that chose to honor those requests would be favored.
Gable said his company has made it clear since the beginning of the project that they would be asking companies to honor the wishes and beliefs of the town’s founder.
“This is what we have said all along,” Gable said. “Tom is spending (more than $200 million) to build a Catholic university, and those beliefs don’t stop on the edge of campus. We have just asked that in respect of the leadership’s wishes, companies refrain from selling contraceptives.”
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said while Ave Maria has chosen not to legally restrict retailers from selling certain products, “it is still only half the story.”
The other half of the story falls on the 1,000 acres designated as the university.
Current university rules do not allow the campus health clinic to provide or offer reproductive health services, said AMU president Nick Healy. The same rules will stand once the permanent campus is completed, he said.
“I don’t think we can be a bona fide Catholic university and flagrantly go against Catholic (rules),” Healy said.
Healy said the university has come to a private agreement with Naples Community Hospital, which will have a clinic in the town, that would prohibit the hospital from providing reproductive health services to AMU students. Healy said he is unsure how the agreement would work out, since it is in the early stages.
But “arbitrarily discriminating” against who receives reproductive health services could lead to just as many problems as not allowing the services at all, said ACLU legal director Randall Marshall.
While a small group of private residents can get together to create rules governing a private community, like a condo or homeowners association, Marshall said Ave Maria is more than that.
“This is a project that is beyond this concept,” Marshall said. “They’re building a (town), and once this is a town, it is going to be open to the public.”
Not everyone who happens upon town will have the same beliefs as Ave Maria leadership; but that’s another myth officials are trying to bust.
In their joint statement, Monaghan and Marinelli said “the town will be open to all, regardless of age, religion or race. ... The controversy over contraceptives and the portrayal of Ave Maria as a Catholic town should not and cannot overshadow the value and importance of this event.”
Barron Collier Cos. have received more than 3,000 requests for information about residences in the community. While only about 1,000 private residences will be complete in the first phase of construction, it is expected the town eventually will have about 11,000 private residences. And Ave Maria officials hope that it’s a mix of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
“This is not going to be a Catholic town,” Healy said. “We want the town to be open to everyone.”
Healy said rather than being based on Catholic norms and morals, the community will be based upon traditional family values that often support Catholic traditions.
“What people do in their own home is none of our business,” Healy said. “There has been no attempt to regulate or restrict that.”
Healy said neither the town nor the university would profit from Ave Maria being an exclusive community.
“I think the faculty would be very distressed if this was only a Catholic community,” he said. “We have many people on our staff and a few on our faculty who are not Catholic. Really I think this has been blown all out of proportion.”
I noticed when ABC gave it coverage, they HAD to show some “person” from ACLU, sticking her face in the camera to make her petulance known to the nation. Who cares?
If Ave Maria is private land, ACLU can stand outside the gates and stick their tongues out all they want.
One doesn’t have to be Catholic to think Ava Maria is a great idea!
>> reproductive health services <<
Abortion? Pap smears? Gynecological exams? Obstetrics? Contraception? Why the vague newspeak, Naples? Afraid Ave Maria might come across rational?