I've been meaning to post about this for several days. Last week, on Monday, August 27, Ave Maria University officially opened. On that grand occasion, Tom Monaghan called the professors at the former Ave Maria College in Michigan, "academic terrorists." (The Naples News reports on this here. Monaghan also used the phrase during his interview with Al Kresta, during Hour 2 of the August 27, 2007 Kresta in the Afternoon broadcast.) Monaghan used that despicable phrase because he believes the Ave Maria College professors did all they could to oppose Monaghan's efforts and to sabotage the Florida venture. On the radio show, Monaghan explained that the opposition he experienced was just an indication that he was doing what God wants him to do.

Fumare's favorite canon lawyer, Dr. Ed Peters, has a good response.

Assuming the truth of those sad days matters anymore, let me say one more time that I did not see faculty and staff of Ave Maria College in Michigan doing everything they could" to stop Ave Maria in Florida: instead, I saw them doing what little they could within the law and their meager resources to save Ave Maria College in Michigan. Such a simple distinction, and so many can't or won't see it.
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As many know, I stood up for the Michigan faculty and staff who opposed the abrupt destruction of Ave Maria College and, like others before me and others after, I was duly shown the door by the Ave Maria empire. Maybe I should have seen that as evidence of God's approval of my actions, but it's hard to be poetic when one suddenly has to find a new way to meet the mortgage in the Michigan economy.
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Tom Monaghan, in contrast, seems to think that his paterfamilias style of philanthropy permits him to show continual scorn for the vanquished, those who dared to question his judgment about various projects, projects to which they, often as much and sometimes more than he, contributed, but in which he allowed them little or no voice.

More at In the Light of the Law.

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