He also owns the Domino's Farms Office Park, located in the Ann Arbor Charter Township, Michigan, which he first started building during 1984.
A supporter of the pro-life movement and other Catholic teachings "to combat the nation's 'moral crisis'", Monaghan has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting them.
[6] He and his wife, Marjorie Zybach, whom he met while delivering pizza, were married in 1962 and have four daughters: Margaret, Susan, Mary and Barbara.
[7] In 1989, the National Organization for Women (NOW) called for a boycott of Domino's because of his active opposition to abortion; however, it is unclear what effect, if any, that had on the company's sales.
[11] In 1998, Monaghan reportedly sold his 93% of stock ownership of Domino's Pizza to Bain Capital, an investment firm based in Boston, for an estimated $1 billion.
However, after reading a passage by C. S. Lewis on pride (from Mere Christianity[7]), Monaghan divested himself of most of his more ostentatious possessions, including the Detroit Tigers in 1992.
[8] He gave up his lavish office suite at Domino's headquarters, replete with leather-tiled floors and an array of expensive Frank Lloyd Wright furnishings, turning it into a corporate reception room.
[citation needed] He has been one of the foremost collectors of Wright artifacts, including an oak dining room table and chairs for which he paid $1.6 million.
[21] He purchased a portion of Drummond Island in Michigan, where he created a private resort complex featuring buildings designed in the style of Wright, and later sold it to Clifton Haley and Denny Bailey.
[28] In 1988, Pope John Paul II addressed members of Legatus and encouraged them, “The world needs genuine witnesses to Christian ethics in the field of business and the Church asks you to fulfill this role publicly with courage and perseverance.”[29] In 1997, he recruited former Evangelical pastor Al Kresta to lead Ave Maria Communications, which became the first Catholic radio apostolate in America with the popularly known Ave Maria Radio.
The Ave Maria School of Law,[38] previously located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, opened its doors in 2000, and received full accreditation from the American Bar Association in 2005.
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.
The school's stated goal is to educate competent moral attorneys who will influence all aspects of the legal profession and advance natural law theory.
The Ave Maria Law School graduated its last Michigan class in the Spring of 2009 and immediately relocated to Naples, Florida permanently.
[9] As a step to fulfilling his dream of creating a new Catholic university, Monaghan founded Ave Maria College[39] in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
[41] A joint venture, in which Monaghan is a 50% partner with developer Barron Collier, controls all non-university real estate in the town, and plans to build 11,000 homes and several business districts.
Monaghan said in 2005 that any town retailers would not be allowed to sell contraceptives or pornography, a statement that drew legal criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union.
[42] Threatened with lawsuits, Monaghan and the developers went on a national public relations campaign in March 2007 to retract the notion that Catholic doctrine could ever be enforced as law.
Lou Holtz, Larry Kudlow, Michael Novak, Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Roney are the other members of the Funds' Catholic Advisory Board.
Monaghan has been active in Republican Party politics, and was one of the key financial backers of Sam Brownback in his 2008 presidential campaign.