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LOL kandukuri

Get a real life. Like us.

For a while there, Mr. Benen, you had me suckered with the Catholic Pizza Law School story, but by page four I realized it had to be a Kurt Vonnegut novel, and not a story from real life.

I mean, The Leaning Tower of Pizza; a Catholic Law School with the best golf course in America, to host the Catholic Augusta National? A 250 foot crucifix?
I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid. Or the other way around.

OK - dialing to serious here: rich people can be extraordinary idiots. Often, the ultra-rich made their money from the proliferation of one basic idea - in Monaghan's case that of flipping pizzas at scale; in Gates case that of developing the OS for a universal utility.
But while Gates has a rounded intellect, Monaghan is a moron, with money. Beware of morons with money - just look at what they have turned the GOP into.

Adding: since this was supposed to be Mr. Monaghan's act of contrition after years of sinful pride, I believe he may be in for the down elevator when he encounters St. Peter.

As I read this post, I imagined Dean Martin singing:

"When the moon hits your eye,
Like a big pizza pie ...."

and Monaghan wiping his face with a napkin. Imagine, mooned with a pizza. That's amore? LOL!

This is actually sad in many ways. It seems like the school tried to make a bid for some independence and to act like a legitimate institution but was crushed my dominoes. It seems like monaghan's goal would have been much better served by simply allowing the conservatives to run the law school with his funds. Trust me, there are plenty of bright conservative lawyers and faculty who could really have made this a conservative legal haven like liberty dreams of being. I feel bad for the students who were abused in this situation. law school is expensive and getting bounced around because your school is collapsing makes it hard to do the things you need to do in school.

@Gaucho Politico

It's not sad. It's absolutely tragic.
Mr. Monaghan deluded himself into thinking he was a university administrator, grand architect and builder of cities. And he destroyed several academic insitutions, the careers of a number of scholars, and the prospects of hundreds of students.

BTW - check out the comments thread over at the article. It appears that Monaghan can still afford PR-hacks.
They'll probably turn up here soon.

Wow, is this a timely cautionary tale! I teach at a university at which the faculty has been on strike for almost a week (tentative agreement this morning, however, praise be to the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster and more to the point, to our heroic bargaining team). We were out largely over items of governance. A lot of people couldn't understand why we had our knickers in a twist about things like keeping a cap on adjunct faculty, preserving tenure, preserving faculty governance, and demanding more transparency about things like the proposed new med school for which they have been refusing to show us the accreditation application (!!!) Well, here's a prime example of why it's important.

I hope I'm not sounding insensitive to the plight of the screwed faculty members, but...

Could no one have predicted that a law school run by Monaghan might end this way? It's not like no one knew anything about the guy, his total lack of experience in academia and the way he ran Domino's. It might have been obvious that a professional school run by an avowed authoritarian with megalomania and an ungoverned temper might not be the best place to seek academic freedom. And I say this having worked closely with Catholic universities that do work tirelessly to safeguard academic freedom, so this isn't an anti-Catholic thing.

As a Detroiter who has followed Monaghan's folly for years I enjoyed the article. Like Stein sez above, the story seems straight out of Vonnegut. Just one quibble - it's lake St. Clair, not Sinclair

Add to this also the bit about having your career ruined if you get crosswise with the Big Boss. It's one thing to waste a few years in a bad job, it's something else entirely to have your reputation trashed. Who would work for Ave Maria now, knowing the risks?

Of course, any long-suffering Tigers fan can tell you that money is not a sign of intelligence.

Like when he put a football coach (Bo Shembechler) in charge of a baseball team.

Thomas Merton wrote about poets in New Seeds of Contemplation:

A Catholic poet should be an apostle by being first of all a poet, not try to be a poet by being first of all an apostle. For if he presents himself to people as a poet, he is going to be judged by people as a poet and if he is not a good one his apostolate will be ridiculed.

Substitute "law school" for "poet" and the principle still applies.

GREAT article. I am also a Michigander who has followed Monaghan for years, and I also had a particular interest in the way this played out on the Catholic Right. Folks like Bill Donohue were THRILLED by this school. It was an answer to prayer and fasting as far as they were concerned. As the article mentioned, Monaghan funds several right-wing Catholic media companies in southeastern Michigan, and these were networked with EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network, Mother Angelica's operation. Ave Maria School of Law was the training ground for the future of Catholic societal influence as far as EWTN was concerned.

However, what I find striking is that so many of the complaints being made about how Monaghan ran the school are strikingly similar to the concerns of what Monaghan and the faculty of this school would call dissenters. Many Catholic reform organizations are concerned at the arbitrary power bishops have, and the enormous damage it can do. Yet for all of the upset over the way Tom Monaghan destroyed this institution, these same people cannot see that an autocracy, especially an theocratic autocracy, just might lend itself to such weakness.

The reason such autocracy has not caught up with the Catholic Church is that it was mostly autocratic in theory, not in practice, for many centuries. For the last few decades, the increasing consolidation of decision-making in the episcopacy and Rome's power grab is going to expose the church to the same problems that plagued Ave Maria. Reading the article, and knowing the Catholic Church, it is my layman's opinion that Ave Maria is a microcosm of at least some of the issues impacting the Catholic Church in the modern era.

The Detroit Tigers, Thomas Merton, Lake St. Clair, and Domino's Pizza all in one thread? Throw in the Stroh's Brewery, the Rouge Plant, Faygo, and Bill Kennedy at the Movies and you have the makings for a stream of consciousness novel about Joey Kowalski, an altar boy who grew up on the East Side in the '70's.

How dare you people slander a good Catholic man like Tom Monaghan!

I dunno, I think the name might have something to do with it. Unless you were desperate, would you really want to find out your lawyer came from Hail Mary Law School?

Windhorse-

I read "Bill Kennedy at the Movies" and nearly dropped my Vernors. Thanks.

Ernie Harwell

It is unfortunate for Professor Safranek. I attended University of Detroit Mercy Law School and had him as a professor, actually with one of Monaghan's kids. He could be abrasive and difficult at times, but it was really only him trying to get the most out of his students. He never came across as a zealot, like Monaghan is known to be.

Monaghan has always been known as a nut. Pizza is one thing, but the rest of it is out there. The story did not mention that, in addition to the bison, 3 foot tall jack rabbits and the rest of the petty zoo, Domino's Farm has its own enormous cross. Except its bent in various directions on its way up to the crossed section and overlooks the expressway. I'm guessing Monaghan wanted to replicate that in Florida. And I don't think his kids were all that thrilled when he sold everything and decided not to give them any of it.

The rumors and stories of Ave Maria started while I was still there. Safranek, to my recollection, was not the only one that left Detroit Mercy to go to Ave Maria. He may have been the one with the idea, but it was not him alone that left things behind to join Monaghan's vision.

Sad, crazy and destructive, all at the same time.

The problem with authority worship, which seems to be a common trait among conservatives and religious dogmatics, is that authority figures often have bad ideas, develop megalomania, and behave like we see Monaghan doing here. And it's inherent in the authoritatian point of view that "dissenters" are traitors who should be suppressed if not outright crushed.

So while I have some generalized sympathy for the faculty and students who've been burned by this, in some way it's their own philosophical inclinations coming back to bite them.

Grey Guy, point of information: that bizarre, zig-zaggy structure on Domino's Farms isn't a cross, but a cell-phone tower. Monaghan was approached by a cell phone company with a request for a tower on his property. He refused. Negotiations ensued, and finally Monaghan played what he thought was his trump card: he drew a bizarre shape on a piece of paper and said, "I'll give you permission to build your tower, but only if you use this design." So they called his bluff and did it.