Nightly rosary walks around campus. Much talk about the virtues of abstinence and evils of abortion. Ave Maria is no ordinary university.
By SHARON TUBBS
Published March 28, 2004
[Times photos: Bob Croslin]
Every Friday, students at Ave Maria University in Naples read prayers and pass out pamphlets at an abortion clinic in nearby Fort Myers. One recent Friday, Mark Rutherford, a student at Ave Maria College in Michigan, and Fort Myers resident Judy Minahan join the students.
While many college students spend spring break on the beach, Kevin Stith, a freshman at Ave Maria University, prays outside an abortion clinic in Fort Myers.
NAPLES - Just after 6:30 a.m. a small group of students limp into the campus courtyard, a few still rubbing their eyes. More usually come, but most of the 120 students at Ave Maria University are worn out from exams and studying during midterms week.
The campus is quiet. Morning prayers don't start until 7:30; the first Mass is at 7:50, confession at 8. Students aren't required to go to any of them, although many do.
They aren't required to hold vigils outside abortion clinics either. But Ave Maria - founded last year to provide an education in synch with the teachings of Rome - supports the activity, even supplies transportation when they need it.
That's why this group is up so early. With rosary beads in hand, they climb into one student's red Honda Civic for a 45-minute drive to Fort Myers Women's Health Center. They will read from a prayer book, sing hymns, hold up posters and hand out pamphlets.
The Honda, with a "Choose Life" license plate, weaves around flatbed trucks and semis as the students begin to pray:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
"Notre Dame of the South"
The students have traveled from all over the United States, bypassing established secular and Catholic universities, to attend this fledgling college founded by Thomas Monaghan, the former owner of Domino's Pizza. He sold the pizza chain in 1998 and committed what was left of the $1-billion sale after taxes and other expenses to Catholic higher education.
Some people give their fortunes to hospitals and other charitable causes, Monaghan told a group of Catholics in Orlando earlier this year. But he thought: What good would it do to cure cancer so someone could live 10 years longer, die and go to hell? Ave Maria, he said, is in the business of "saving souls."
His first venture was Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Mich. When zoning restrictions stopped him from expanding there, he got the idea to build in Florida and committed $200-million for Ave Maria University, which opened last fall on a temporary campus in Naples. The Ypsilanti college may eventually close.
Monaghan says modern Catholic universities have strayed from the teachings of Rome and fail to incorporate the church's historical impact in their courses - a charge that others in academia deny.
"The Catholic Church is alive and well at Notre Dame," said spokesman Matthew Storin. "I think that what Mr. Monaghan is expressing is a personal opinion."
Storin noted that 85 percent of Notre Dame's student body is Catholic, many of whom pack the school's basilica regularly for worship. Students are required to take theology. The school's reputation speaks for itself, he said, adding that Notre Dame is ranked No. 19 in U.S. News & World Report's 2004 list of America's Best Colleges.
Ave Maria supporters believe the new school will match such prestige someday, calling it "the Notre Dame of the South." But even with Monaghan's millions, his school has a long way to go. Notre Dame, founded in 1842, has a $2.9-billion endowment.
Associate dean Michael Dauphinais is careful when describing Ave Maria's mission: "The university seeks neither to be liberal nor conservative, but to be faithful to the teachings of the church."
This isn't a Bible college, he says. Students take a core liberal arts curriculum that includes theology, philosophy, history, literature, classical languages and natural sciences. Professors are expected to provide a quality education, melding intellect with theology when the opportunity arises.
And it arises often.
Inside one modern history class, professor Jeff Hass and students crossed themselves in prayer as the session began. Hass talked about Copernicus' theory that the sun was the center of the universe. What problems did the theory cause, he asked.
Where does God fit into it, came the answer. "Mmmhmm," Hass nodded.
An earlier theory placed heaven, where God and believers resided, beyond Earth, the planets and stars. Then came Copernicus, and later Galileo, who agreed that the sun was the center. The Catholic Church came down hard on Galileo. Why, he asked.
The Protestant Reformation was going on at the same time, a girl in the front row answered.
Yes, Hass said, Martin Luther had based Protestantism on his own interpretation of Scripture. The Catholic Church was getting protective.
Galileo, who was Catholic, backed down after going before the Inquisition, Hass said. But the relationship between Galileo and the Catholic Church is "often taught wrongly," Hass said. Some professors paint the church as the "big bad entity that squashed Galileo," he said. "But Galileo didn't put up much of a fight."
Hass' classroom was actually a corner of desks in the school's sanctuary. For now, Ave Maria is set up in a complex that was designed to be an assisted-living community in Naples. The college bought the property for its interim campus. Space is tight. Two condo high-rises act as dorms. The administrative offices, sanctuary, chapel and cafeteria are inside a clubhouse.
Golf, basketball, flag football, volleyball and soccer teams are forming.
Monaghan envisions a permanent, 750-acre campus in Immokalee, with a golf course and a neighboring, self-contained town - also called Ave Maria - for faculty and staffers, complete with stores and a town center. Last week, the university unveiled plans for a 3,300-seat church, which school officials said would be the largest seating capacity among Catholic churches in the United States. They also said the church would have the "world's largest" crucifix.
A high-ranking visitor
The hum of prayer drowns out the sound of sneakers and sandals shuffling along the asphalt at 9 p.m. Two dozen students have put down their philosophy and history books, gathered in the courtyard and begun their nightly ritual, circling the campus while reciting the rosary.
David Englestad, wearing a hooded Ave Maria sweatshirt, leads the group. He's 28, from Boynton Beach, and says he's at Ave Maria because he had "an adult conversion experience." He wasn't true to the church when he was younger. But after six years in the Navy and the birth of his son, now 5, he wanted to start over, go back to school. He wanted a college that taught "fidelity to the church." He may join the school's pre-theologate program for men considering priesthood.
"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women," Englestad is saying, his eyes solemn and blank. A few street lamps and porch lights from the villas light the way.
The group responds: "Hail Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen."
"Forgive us our sins. Save us from the fire of hell."
Students are rounding the administration building when the Rev. Joseph Fessio, Ave Maria's chancellor, strides toward them in a black suit and priestly collar. He raises his hands to quiet them. They will have to start over, he announces. Ave Maria brought Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, the archbishop of Vienna, to town for a few days. Schonborn heard about the students' rosary walk and wants to join them.
"He's a great man of the church," Fessio says. "He's one of four cardinals who is likely to become pope."
Earlier in the day, Schonborn drew 1,000 to a Naples parish where he spoke about Catholic and Muslim relations.
"I think in Rome, and also in my case, I see Ave Maria as one of these positive efforts to come back to the good Catholic identity of these Catholic universities," Schonborn had told a St. Petersburg Times reporter. In the 1960s, '70s and '80s, most Catholic schools focused on academics and being competitive with secular universities, to the exclusion of promoting Catholic teachings, he said. "So there's a worry about Catholic universities being in dissent, especially in America."
Ave Maria, he said, is "a very promising start."
Now with a clear sense of Schonborn's prominence, students hurry back to the courtyard. The cardinal hasn't arrived yet, so a few go to their rooms. One guy who had been wearing a T-shirt that said "We don't freeze our buns in Naples" returns minutes later in khakis and a short-sleeved camp shirt. Another who had been in shorts with a towel draped over his bare chest emerges in dark pants and a striped polo.
Finally, a driver pulls up and out steps a tall man in wire-rimmed glasses, a black, red-trimmed cassock and gray matching skull cap. Students smile at him, nod silent hellos and stand back in reverence. Englestad starts all over again, "Hail Mary, full of grace . . . ."
Room for non-Catholics
Paulette Whittingham was laughing with friends on the other end of the courtyard when the cardinal came by. She's 19, from Homestead and not Catholic. Raised Episcopalian, she's one of several Protestants at Ave Maria. She also says she's the only black person at Ave Maria.
Whittingham enrolled at Ave Maria because she said she had trouble getting into state schools. She said she had good grades, but low SAT scores. She considered the Army, until her best friend, who is Catholic, persuaded her to apply at Ave Maria. Now both are students.
Things worked out for the best, she says. Tuition, room and board are $15,000, much lower than some private schools and about the same as some state schools, she says.
But when classmates find out that she's not Catholic, some ask, "What are you doing here?"
"To me, it's not all about being Catholic," Whittingham says. The classes are tough, so she focuses on her studies.
She has made a lot of Catholic friends who like to have a good time. For fun, they go to downtown Naples, an Irish restaurant called McCabe's Irish Pub & Grill that has live bands. A few weekends ago, Whittingham and some classmates unwound from their homework as a singer crooned Danny Boy.
"I go from Mariah Carey to Eminem to Bob Marley. And I love Latin music" (although she's not looking forward to a required Latin class). She wants to minor in music education, major in sports medicine.
She loves it here. The small college with a close-knit family feel is just what she needed. At night, students let off steam in the courtyard. "Everybody's just down here, talking loud, throwing the football."
Sometimes things get out of hand. Last semester, she got two warnings to keep it down during quiet hours. "So I'm watching out now."
Students don't have a curfew, although men can't go to the women's dorm after certain hours and vice versa. Those who are 21 can have alcohol on campus.
Whittingham goes to Mass occasionally. She doesn't sign up for weekly adoration hours where students sit in the chapel to keep watch over the Eucharist. But she can't escape the conservative atmosphere of traditional Catholicism.
Occasionally, someone will start a conversation about abstinence, abortion or politics. The debate is usually one-sided: abstinence good, abortion bad, George W. Bush for president.
Whittingham says she's still making up her mind on sex and abortion. She shakes her head at classmates when they praise Bush.
"He did not have to do that war thing," she tells them. "There are people dying for no reason out there. . . . I can't wait until Hillary runs for president."
Student attitudes
"I wanted to go to a college that was Catholic through and through," Bridget Mullen says, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside her dorm apartment. "I'm really conservative in my beliefs."
Just before the dinner hour, Mullen is lounging with three of her roommates: Gloria Martinez, 18, of Miami; Kathleen Waltenburg, 19, of Port Angeles, Wash.; and Amara Cleveland, 18, of Aztec, N.M.
Martinez was not raised in a devout Catholic home like the others. Her mother is a nonpracticing Catholic. When she was a sophomore in high school, she took a religion class and grew excited about the faith. Today she prefers the traditional Latin Mass, which the university celebrates three times a week.
Martinez thinks she appreciates the faith more than some of her peers. "I had to chase after it," she says. "I wasn't raised in it. It's something I had to work for. And even though I'm where some of these people are here, I'm still learning."
Her roommates are more conservative than she is, though.
On abstinence, for instance: "I'd say it's the choice of the person," Martinez says. "I just don't understand how someone can live their lives by a set of rules."
Waltenburg: "I take abstinence very seriously. I'm saving myself until marriage and my first kiss until my wedding day. I want to give my mate everything."
Their desks reveal their individuality. Martinez has pictures of her boyfriend back home. Waltenburg, pictures of her family.
"I think if you're looking for a prospective husband, this is a good place to look," Waltenburg says. But she's not looking, since she hasn't ruled out being a nun.
Mullen, 19, from Santa Rosa, Calif., has never dated anyone. Her parents set a no-dating rule in high school. She didn't like it at first, but by her junior year, she didn't want to date boys anyway. Going to a place like Ave Maria improves the chances of finding someone equally serious in the faith, she says.
"Authentic Catholic scholarship"
"This is the best of times, but the worst of times for our church," Ave Maria president Nicholas Healy says from the podium.
A hundred Catholics have gathered in Tampa at St. Lawrence Catholic Church's Higgins Hall for an Ave Maria Founders Club meeting. Michael and Mary Martha Solomon, who live here, organized the event. They've established founders clubs in other metropolitan areas, including Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.
Monaghan has said he needs to raise about $350-million in the next 15 or 20 years if Ave Maria is to become "one of the best Catholic universities, not only in the United States, but in the world."
Healy paints a bleak picture of the Catholic Church, noting that since 1965, the number of priests, nuns and religious brothers has dropped steeply, by more than 50 percent in some cases.
"And, certainly, Catholics have not been a political force in this country." Society, he says, still accepts abortion and fetal research.
And many Catholics don't obey the pope.
In the midst of all this came the sex abuse scandal. Healy points a finger at seminaries. The scandal revealed their failure in educating honorable priests.
"More than anything else, it is a crisis of truth, a collapse of faith," he says. "The need is critical for authentic Catholic scholarship. And Ave Maria intends to play a role."
Monsignor Laurence Higgins, the rector at St. Lawrence and a popular figure among Tampa Bay area Catholics:
"When I came to this country 51 years ago, the universities were Catholic - even Notre Dame," he says in his trademark Irish brogue. (The crowd bursts out in chuckles.) "What in the name of God happened?"
But Higgins praises the Lord that he lived long enough to see Florida get a true Catholic university.
"A university that's neither right nor left," he says. "That's Catholic."
Getting their message out
Outside the Women's Health Center in Fort Myers, the students wait for Judy Minahan. The 63-year-old retired English teacher is Catholic and has protested abortion for 15 years. She buys the $5 permit Fort Myers requires for demonstrations with three or more people.
The students position a "Let Us Help" sign at each of two driveway entrances to the center, which is part of a medical and social services complex with four buildings. Mark Fein, a 25-year-old transfer from the Michigan campus, organizes the trips. He stands ready with brochures.
Most drivers pass the group without making eye contact. One man tells Fein to move. A woman drives by and yells an obscenity.
Another woman slows her car, rolls down the window after leaving another building in the complex. She tells Fein she's had two abortions, that she doesn't feel good about what she has done. He hands her a pamphlet about abortion and emotions.
This will go on for two hours. Fein doesn't have classes this Friday, so when he gets back to campus at mid morning, he'll study and relax. On Saturdays, he usually car pools with a dozen classmates in the university's 15-passenger van. With Bibles and rosary beads, they head for Planned Parenthood in Naples to pray. They don't believe in artificial birth control, Fein says. It's against the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Founded by Thomas S. Monaghan, who also founded the Domino's Pizza chain
Location: Interim campus, 1025 Commons Circle in Naples
By fall 2006: 750-acre campus in Immokalee
Current student enrollment - 121 students from 32 states and Canada
Projected enrollment:
Fall 2004 - 300 to 350
Fall 2005 - 450
Fall 2006 - 650
Ultimately - 5,000
Admission standards: Minimum 1,000 SAT score and 2.4 GPA (with some exceptions)
Tuition, room and board: $15,000
Faculty:
- Current: Nine full time, two part time in the undergraduate program; eight faculty for graduate exceptional education and theology programs. (All but one faculty member have doctorates or equivalent degrees in their fields.)
- Fall 2004: 28 full-time undergraduate instructors; 12 graduate instructors.
- Faculty members include a rabbi, a Greek Orthodox instructor and an adjunct professor who is a Christian evangelical.
- Guidelines say a majority of the faculty must be Catholic; non-Catholics must respect the faith's teachings.
Mission: "To unite existentially by intellectual effort two orders of reality that too frequently tend to be placed in opposition as though they were antithetical: the search for truth, and the certainty of already knowing the fount of truth" - Pope John Paul II in his 1990 statement Ex Corde Ecclesiae. (Ave Maria adheres to the document's outline of an ideal Catholic university. "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" is part of the school logo.)
