Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts

Saturday, February 03, 2007

The Owner of Domino's, Tom Monaghan's, amazing life conversion

Tom Monaghan didn't have a conversion from another faith, but came to see his own faith in a stronger way. He developed a stronger devotion to ideals with which he was raised. Many have not heard the name Tom Monaghan, but he was the owner of the Baseball team the Detroit Tigers, but more famously he made his fortune as the owner of Domino's pizza. He became extremely rich, in the hundreds of millions, as he owned the most successful pizza franchise in the world. He was rich and he used his money to buy expensive things, such as houses and cars. One example of his extravagence was his leather floor in his huge office.

After reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis in 1989, Monaghan had a great awakening and felt he was living a life with too much pride and ego. He sold most of his expensive possession, and a mansion which he was building remains half-finished. Monaghan took 2 years off to explore spiritual and personal goals. He devoted himself fully to living a Catholic life. The following information is from Wikipedia, and you can go there to find its sources:

Monaghan is a conservative Republican Catholic with a particular interest in advocating for the right to life and for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. In 1983 he established the Mater Christi Foundation, today known as the Ave Maria Foundation.[1] It is a private foundation formed to focus on Catholic education, Catholic media, community projects and other Catholic charities.

He helped form Legatus,[2] an organization of high-profile Catholic business leaders to promote the ideals of the Church in society. The name was taken from the Latin meaning "ambassador". Legatus was to serve as a spiritual resource and social community for those Catholics who stand at the helm of America's entrepreneurial ship. The idea came after he received Holy Communion from Pope John Paul II in his private papal chapel at the Vatican in 1987. Today there are 34 chapters in the U.S. and Canada which encompass nearly 1,500 members who represent over 750 major firms.

That Vatican visit moved him so much he returned to the United States committed to promoting the Catholic faith. He soon established Ave Maria Radio,[3] the Ave Maria List[4] pro-life political action committee, and the Thomas More Law Center,[5] a public interest law firm focused on defending the rights of Christians. The foundation donates resources to help alleviate poverty in Central and South America. In addition, his foundation established the Spritus Sanctus Academies.[6] These elementary schools are administered by the newly established community of nuns, the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist.[7] This thriving order of teaching sisters has benefited from Monaghan's philanthropy, and has so many new young nuns that it had to double the size of its convent almost immediately.

The Ave Maria Foundation has subsequently fine-tuned its focus to higher education, and has established both a university and a law school. Along with that change in focus, many of the other non-profit entities that the Ave Maria Foundation established have become independent or are in the process of being weaned from Ave Maria Foundation grants. This narrowing of focus and the recent geographic re-alignment to Florida (see below) have ignited no small amount of controversy among those who share his religious convictions.

The Ave Maria School of Law,[8] located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, opened its doors in 2000, and received full accreditation from the American Bar Association in 2005, the earliest possible date under ABA rules. The school was a dream of several professors from the University of Detroit Mercy, who publicly left that institution when it allowed several pro-choice members of the Michigan Supreme Court to appear at the school's annual "Red Mass." Professors Stephen Safranek, Mollie Murphy, Richard Myers and Joseph Falvey, setting out to form a new orthodox Catholic law school, presented their idea to Monaghan (who had previously been a strong supporter of opening a new law school at Franciscan University) to provide significant funding through his Ave Maria Foundation. Together they enlisted Bernard Dobranski, Dean at The Catholic University of America's law school and former Dean of Detroit Mercy's Law School, to lead up the new school as dean. Monaghan would serve as president of the school's Board of Governors.

A conversion to Christ is a powerful thing and can, as happened in this case, result in a great change in life for the better.