May 04, 2023
Liz Duffy ’23 discovered community, and a love of theology, at Providence College
By Ealish Brawley ’14
The connections that Liz Duffy ’23 formed during her first week on Providence College’s campus convinced her that she had found a new home. Interactions with new friends and the Dominican friars reignited her faith, led her to major in both theology and humanities, and encouraged her to organize an intellectual retreat for students and to apply for a summer fellowship in Switzerland.
Although Duffy comes from a distinctively Friar family, with both parents and two of her five siblings graduates of the college, she did not initially have her heart set on Friartown. Her plan was to study at PC for a year and then transfer to another school.
After a week in FaithWorks — a pre-orientation, service-immersion program in which incoming students perform service work for vulnerable populations in Providence while reflecting and building community — Duffy called her parents and said she had changed her mind. She wanted to spend four years at Providence.
“It was the first time I met people who really had a deep sense of their love for God. It showed in their joy and their radiance. They wanted to talk about it, and they wanted to help you understand it,” Duffy said.
Raised in a large, Irish Catholic family in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, Duffy considered herself an agnostic in high school. As an independent thinker concerned with finding the truth and grappling with deep questions, she enjoyed long talks at PC with friends. Many conversations took place around the flame statue in Calabria Plaza, the embodiment of the college’s motto, veritas — truth, symbolized by a torch.
Duffy also continued these conversations through the structure of Peer Ministry, meeting bi-weekly with a peer-led small group to discuss matters of faith and college life. She was selected her sophomore year to be a co-leader of a group of first-year students.
When students were sent home due to COVID-19 during the spring semester of her first year, Duffy was able to maintain the connections she formed through FaithWorks and Peer Ministry. Her friends met regularly on an informal Zoom meeting to pray the rosary together, often staying on the call long after the prayer had ended to chat and catch up on each other’s lives.
“Connections with fellow students and with the Friars were instrumental in helping me feel like I still had a community while being physically isolated,” Duffy said.
Duffy also found support from friars on campus — members of the Dominican Order of Preachers, which founded and administers PC. Interactions with the friars in the classroom as well as impromptu conversations through Campus Ministry fueled Duffy’s desire to learn more about her faith. “They had the answers to my questions, and they taught them to me in a way that was caring and allowed me to continue asking questions,” she said.
Her intellectual curiosity, nurtured by conversations with friends and discussions with the friars, led Duffy to decide to major in both theology and humanities.
Inspired by Dominican Intellectual Tradition, a course she took with Rev. Irenaeus Dunleavy, O.P., assistant chaplain, Duffy planned an intellectual retreat for PC students at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. It was made possible with help from Father Irenaeus and Rev. Justin Bolger, O.P., chaplain and director of Campus Ministry, as well as the Thomistic Institute, a Dominican ministry based in Washington, D.C., which promotes Catholic truth in modern universities. Through a grant provided by the PC’s humanities program, 16 students traveled to D.C. flew to D.C. for the retreat.
The retreat focused on acedia, a sense of apathy and dissatisfaction with things that are spiritual or are mental goods. Acedia can manifest itself in college life as a lack of motivation for academic tasks or a neglect for the spiritual and intellectual benefits of study. Through the Thomistic Institute’s connections, Duffy invited two prominent scholars, R.J. Snell, Ph.D., editor-in-chief of Public Discourse and director of academic programs at the Witherspoon Institute, and Thomas Hibbs, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Baylor University and former president of the University of Dallas.
The summer after her junior year, Duffy was awarded a Father Philip A. Smith, O.P. Student Fellowship for Service and Study Abroad. Fellowships are awarded to rising juniors and seniors for summer study or service at Catholic and Dominican sites outside the United States.
Duffy served as an intern in Geneva, Switzerland, with Dominicans for Justice and Peace, a delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council. She attended sessions at the U.N., provided her supervisor with summary reports, and even drafted a presentation for the Order of Preachers’ General Chapter on how their charism, or mission, informs their work at the U.N.
During her senior year, Duffy was president of Campus Ministry’s Pastoral Council, the group that leads the other ministries. She also works part-time as a law clerk at Duffy & Sweeney, Ltd., a law firm which specializes in business law and litigation, and where her father, Robert M. Duffy, J.D. ’82, is founding partner and shareholder. She will continue to work as a law clerk after commencement and plans to study for a graduate degree.
essay by liz duffy ’23
