Tom Monaghan runs in two circles - conservative Catholics and wealthy businessmen. To date, the questions and concerns have come from the former, not the later. But, based on this month's issue of Conde Nast, the later is also starting to wonder. The article opens:

"The soil of southwest Florida is loose and sandy, and it absorbs rich men's fortunes as readily as the summer rains."

The article said that there have been "just 73 completed home sales - a fraction of the 600 he [Monaghan] expected by the end of the year". But it may be worse than just 73. How many of those sales were made by Monaghan himself via his Ave Maria University?

There are signs that Monaghan's relationship with his business partners (Barron Collier Co. and Pulte) is beginning to strain. According to the article:

"I wonder sometimes whether they don't treat this as if it's the same as every other development they do," Monaghan says of his secular partners. "I think if they put a lot of money into marketing to the general population, they might be wasting a lot of it."

AMU's high-profile theologian Fr. Fessio dogpiles on BCC-Pulte:

"Since last winter, television commercials and billboards around Naples have been advertising the development with the slogan "Every family, every lifestyle, every dream." "They're trying to disguise it," says the Reverend Joseph Fessio, a priest and confidant of Pope Benedict XVI's who is Ave Maria University's theologian-in-residence. "Every lifestyle? That's kind of a code word."

For Ave Maria School of Law - still slated to move from its established home in Michigan to Monaghan's south Florida real estate development - those "disappointing" home sales vividly question the wisdom of chaining a school's financial stability and success to a startup business venture in a cyclical market.