Urban Altruism

A blog growing out of the seminar "Seeking the Welfare of the City" (PHIL 390) at Calvin College, directed by James K.A. Smith. For more info visit http://www.calvin.edu/~jks4/city

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Catholic "New Urbanist" Town

This is a kind of weird development in Naples, Florida...a Roman Catholic town created by former Domino's Pizza founder, Tom Monaghan. He calls the town "God's Will."

The town, Ave Maria, "Will be set on 5,000 acres with a European-inspired town center, a massive church and what planners call the largest crucifix in the nation, at nearly 65 feet tall. Monaghan envisions 11,000 homes and 20,000 residents."

I think they've kind of got it all wrong, but we'll be talking about the "material conditions of altruism" so this might be something to reference.

Article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/03/01/national/a110835S09.DTL

Their Website:
http://www.avemaria.com/

Bonus Content (from the website):
Here's a picture of one of the houses:
http://www.avemaria.com/residences/images/_2.jpg

Here's the type of people that they envision living here:
http://www.avemaria.com/residences/images/_4.jpg
http://www.avemaria.com/residences/images/_3.jpg
http://www.avemaria.com/residences/images/_1.jpg

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux on the Order of Love

If you'd like to follow-up on our discussion of the "order of love" in Thomas, take a look at question 26 of Aquinas Summa, IIaIIae.

Another classic that might be of interest is Bernard of Clairvaux's masterful reflections "On Loving God."