Terence Sweeney is a recent graduate (’06) of Providence College. Just before graduating he wrote an article for “The Cowl” — the student mewspaper at PC. His article shows what a huge difference PC and the Dominicans there made in his life. Since graduating, Terence has since applied to become a Dominican of the Eastern Province and has been accepted.

Here begins his article entitled My Divine Comedy at Providence College

“In the middle of the journey of our life / I found myself in a dark wilderness / for I had wandered from the straight and true.” With these words, Dante began his Divine Comedy and looking back on it now I realize that when I entered Providence College I too had wandered from the straight and true. I rarely find it valuable or wise to write about oneself on the pages of the Commentary section but I feel the need in my final article to explain why I so often refer to Providence College as my beloved, why Providence College is my Beatrice. The answer is this: as Beatrice’s prayers lead to Dante’s salvation, Providence College’s education saved me when I was lost in a wilderness.

This may seem like a bit of hyperbole but I mean it sincerely. When I arrived at Providence College I was a fervent although not fully open atheist. I came to a Catholic school with the conviction that religion was a farce, but paradoxically believed that Catholics were unique in their ability to offer a liberal arts education. My hope was quite simply to learn from the Catholics what I could so I could continue in Voltaire’s mission “to kill the infamous thing [the Church]”.

But our God works marvelous deeds, and although I did not will it, I soon found my faulty principles collapsing. I had based my antireligious convictions on the principle that all religion was fundamentally irrational and since man’s highest attribute was reason, religion was an assault on the greatness of man. I believed that religious ethics sought to enslave people to a morality of altruism instead of a true morality of selfish individualism. I was content, proud, and unhappy in my belief. But like Milton’s Satan, in my unhappiness I thought I was strong and that I “could make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

But our great school would not let me lightly rest on my arrogant high school philosophies. Like all my fellow students I was tossed into a course that demanded that I study not only the things I believed in, but also the full catalogue of Western ideas. A great strength of Providence College is that it believes in truth and therefore is not afraid of falsehood. Providence College makes us read Nietzsche when he declares, “God is dead but… for thousands of years his shadow will be shown. -And we- still have to vanquish his shadow.” The Thomistic virtue of this school is that it is not afraid of objections in our search for truth.

I soon found my values and ideals unraveling as I watched the West grow and decay. Reading Aquinas, Dante, Kierkegaard, Beckett, Milton, Chaucer, Eliot and above all Dostoevsky, I realized that the philosophies of men fail. I could not create a response to Dostoevsky’s claim that “if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, that not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.” Fundamentally, Dostoevsky’s claim is that without a living, loving God, there is no meaning, no hope, no value to my life or yours, that we should face life as a living hell, that upon our births our mothers should whisper in our ears “abandon all hope ye who enter life.” It was then that I began to understand the depths of the truths that Providence College believed in. That the only way to Veritas was faith, but not faith alone, “faith seeking understanding” was the path to truth. I came to believe that only in the ark of Christ’s Church could humanity be saved. It was then that I returned to the Church.

This may seem like a rather cerebral story but all along my path at Providence I have been enriched by a community of people beyond compare. As I have struggled on my pilgrimage through Providence to seek he who heals the sick, I have been aided by great friends and great people. For when I entered the classroom I found Father Stokes and his wisdom, when I entered the St. Dominic I found Fr. Keller, OP and his great faith, and when I entered all those bars through these years I found Nick, Joe, and Mike to discuss this journey to faith.

The point to all this is that I owe so much to Providence because through Providence I found grace. I am not unique in this because I know that others in different ways found happiness and faith here at Providence. Providence College claims to “transform lives.” I have seen in my life and other lives that this is true. And I yearn for the moment when we will all sing together “Mother of Truth, we proudly pledge to thee undying love and steadfast loyalty.” I love Providence College, I shall miss Providence College, and I shall never forget Providence College because without Providence I would not have the hope that I may some day see “the love that moves the sun and stars.”

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