A2: Ave Maria

The St. Petersburg Times profiles Tom Monaghan’s Ave Maria, a town in Florida being built around the Ave Maria University and law school, which will relocate there from Ann Arbor in August. “Monaghan’s credo stares down from a display: ‘I believe my mission is to get as many people to heaven as possible.’ The town’s coffee shop is called the Bean. Despite pictures of the Virgin Mary on the wall, it helpfully serves bottled beer in a town without a grocery, at least until the 28,000-square-foot Publix opens one block off the town center this summer. In a riposte to the left-wing slogans Starbucks prints on its coffee cups, the Bean serves up conservative sentiments on its cups: ‘Tolerance without conviction is the same as apathy’ – Chesterton.” [Source]