A Sound of Sheer Silence

Ave Maria clearly represents the logical end-point for a certain style of Catholicism. Because it is such a grandiose and over-the-top project, I think it makes visible a couple of elements of what some commentators have called “neo-conservative Catholicism” (though I am not sure I like that term) that is not always easy to see in the more run-of-the-mill manifestations. The first thing, which I think is symbolized with the Oratory, is the ambiguous relationship it has to “traditional Catholicism.” Everywhere you look at Ave Maria, you see things that are clearly designed to be homages to traditional Catholicism (the church at the center of the town, the Gothic plan of the Oratory, etc.). But the actual implementation is thoroughly new and modern. The church may be at the center of town, but people are clearly expected to live in “the suburbs”—the subdivisions—and “commute” to work. The Oratory is Gothic in plan but modernist in execution. Compared to my parish in San Francisco, it i...

* Hat Tip to Arturo Vasquez, now of the Reditus blog , for the Title Poor logistical planning, for which my father would be very disappointed in me, led to me finding myself sitting in a coffee shop in the town of Ave Maria, Florida. I took a red-eye flight Thursday night to Fort Lauderdale to go to the wedding of a law school classmate of mine. The wedding was being held in Marco Island, which is on the other side of the peninsula from Fort Lauderdale, across the Everglades. The problem was that my flight arrived in Florida at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, but I couldn’t check into my hotel on Marco Island until 4 p.m. Since it only takes two hours to cross the Everglades, I had 6 hours to kill, and no sleep the night before. As you might expect, there is not much to see when crossing the Everglades, and I felt myself starting to zone out. As if on cue, I saw a large billboard for the community of Ave Maria, just off I-75. A combination of fatigue, the promise of some food and a cup of ...