c. 1999 Religion News Service

ANN ARBOR, Mich. _ Tom Monaghan gets cracking early.

Up at 5 a.m., the founder of Domino’s Pizza runs four or five miles and lifts weights for half an hour before attending 8 a.m. Mass in a small chapel tucked away at the Domino’s Farms complex.

Following 8:30 a.m. prayer with his staff, he begins a daily round of meetings. Sometimes he has pizza for lunch; usually it’s a bowl of soup. He goes home at 5:30 or 6 p.m. with a briefcase full of work.

The routine is not appreciably different now from Monaghan’s days running Domino’s Pizza. But instead of tracking Domino’s bottom line, Monaghan, 62, is working for God.

The man who speaks softly but looks people square in the eye is making controversial plans. With his for-profit days behind him, he’s now working on things eternal, and he doesn’t care who criticizes him for it.

In an interview, his first since selling Domino’s Pizza in December, Monaghan talked about his life now, his plans and his 38 years as founder and owner of the pizza chain.

By his own admission, Monaghan is a work in progress. The man who sold his Ann Arbor Township company for nearly $1 billion in December wants to work for God the rest of his life and die nearly broke.

He says he is concentrating on a few key areas:

_ Legatus: Monaghan formed Legatus in 1987 as a support group for Catholic CEOs, or managing partners in the case of large law firms, and their spouses. Its 34 chapters in the United States and Canada include 1,456 members representing 756 companies.

“I want to make Legatus an international organization reaching every market in the world, forming a chapter as soon as there are enough Catholic CEOs to have one,” he says.

“I believe CEOs, heads of companies, are the most talented leaders among the laity in the church. They have more to offer where there is a shortage of leadership and not enough priests. It’s a multiplication thing, and they can set the example, be witnesses (to the Gospel). People look up to those who are successful.”

_ Education: “I feel Catholic education in the U.S. has been watered down _ generally, not across the board. In order for someone to be a committed Catholic, he or she needs to know why, and learning the catechism can’t be an occasional thing.”

The Shepherd Montessori School operates in the same Domino’s Farms office wing as Monaghan’s office, a third Spiritus Sanctus Academy will soon open in the area and Monaghan has donated land at Domino’s Farms for a new Catholic high school. He recently built a 28,000-square-foot motherhouse for the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, a new Catholic order that staffs the Spiritus Sanctus Academies.

Monaghan’s most recent endeavor is Ave Maria Law School, which he plans to open in the fall of 2000.

_ Media: “The Catholic church is the group most persecuted, most criticized by the media. I want to tell people the religious side of the story.

“The media thinks talking about such things as God, religion and spirituality is taboo, and much that has been written is anti-family. I want to use media to teach the faith and dispel myths about the church. I’d like to see faith a much more important part of people’s lives,” Monaghan says.

Monaghan says, for example, that the media underplays stories about the opposition to abortion, underestimating the size of crowds demonstrating at Planned Parenthood health clinics where abortions are performed.

_ Abortion: “I believe that the most avid pro-choice people now realize, as the result of DNA discoveries, that life begins at conception, and we now know, after Roe vs. Wade, that abortion is just mass murder. You can’t simply not do anything about this.

“If I’m in a position to change things, I must do it. There’s a prevailing belief that the end justifies the means, but no one has a right to do wrong,” Monaghan says.

Monaghan says he’ll continue political and educational attempts to stop abortions.

He said he’s starting the Ave Maria Law School “because a lot of damage to society has been done by the courts. They’ve gone beyond what they’re supposed to do.” He wants more connection between morality and the law. He also sees tenure preventing Catholic universities from firing professors who do not toe an orthodox Catholic line.

Gerard V. Bradley, a faculty member at the University of Notre Dame Law School, serves on Ave Maria’s board of governors and advised Monaghan not to give money to Catholic law schools already in place.

“Most simply do not hire faculty with a view of Catholic character in mind,” says Bradley. At a Catholic law school, he says, the majority of faculty members should be practicing Catholics. Courses in moral foundations of law should be required and related electives offered.

But Richard P. McBrien, former chairman of the Notre Dame theology department and author of “Catholicism,” a 1,200-page summary of the faith, believes Ave Maria Law School is a bad idea.

“If I were in (Monaghan’s) position, I’d create scholarships for deserving Catholic students of law,” he said. “Monaghan thinks our theology barely orthodox, maybe even heretical. I don’t agree, but he shouldn’t paint the theology department and the law school with the same conservative brush.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE)

With the number of law school students declining across the country, McBrien wonders whether Ave Maria could eventually face the same situation as the medical and law schools founded by conservative Protestant minister Oral Roberts in Tulsa, Okla. Both institutions ran into financial troubles, the hospital eventually closing for lack of patients and the law school taken over by Regent University, the Christian graduate school founded by evangelist Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach, Va.

Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee suggests Ave Maria Law School will be “isolationist” _ unconnected to a recognized Catholic university and therefore outside the mainstream.

Monaghan counters, “Cardinal O’Connor (John J. O’Connor of the Archdiocese of New York) is on the board of governors, and several other cardinals approve of it. How much more mainstream can you be?”

Monaghan also wants to open Oasis centers near universities where students would live together and share daily prayer.

“I’m interested in Catholic education at every level, from pre-K through college. I want to set the standard, set the example, because students believe what they see,” Monaghan says. “I want excellent teaching in faith and academics. I want to show it can be done so that many organizations will copy and the effects will multiply.”

DEA END O’DONNELL