Catholic university gets 1st alumni

Ave Maria University, envisioned as a rival to Notre Dame, graduates its first class.

NAPLES - Ave Maria University, the first Roman Catholic university to open in the United States in four decades, has graduated its first class.

Twenty-three students received bachelor's degrees Saturday at the school, which its founder, Domino's pizza magnate Thomas S. Monaghan, hopes will one day rival Notre Dame as a focal point of American Catholic higher education.

Honorary degrees were given to L. Paul Bremer, who once led the U.S. occupation in Iraq, and the Most Rev. Raymond Leo Burke, archbishop of St. Louis.

Bremer, a Catholic, told graduates their generation will fight Islamic extremism the way their fathers fought communism and their grandfathers fought fascism. Bremer said while most Muslims do not hate the West, Muslim extremists "hate the very foundations of Western civilization," including separation of church and state, democracy, the right of every adult to vote, and freedom of religion.

Burke told graduates to go out and feed the spiritual hunger of a Godless society.

Valedictorian Alex Wayne Nay, a philosophy major, urged classmates to be the "light that shines before men" and "the hands of Christ."

Seek the truth, he advised, and orient everything to it.

"Popular relativism has no home here, thanks be to God," he said to applause.

The school has been conducting its classes in temporary centers while a $220-million, 750-acre campus is built. It is expected to open next year. Officials hope to have an eventual enrollment of 5,000 students.

[Last modified May 9, 2005, 01:53:06]