Providence embraces the aspirational ideals of Western Civilization: love of liberty and neighbor, public and private morality, human and societal flourishing.

It’s not easy, especially in challenging times, to explore difficult themes or to ask hard questions about which people disagree. We’ve seen disintegration and faction grow in our great country as a result.

At Providence we’re highly motivated to play an integral role in reversing this troubling trend by encouraging our students to pursue thoughtful and civil discourse with each other as a preparation for virtuous citizenship.

Our educational formula is tried and tested. While the great thinkers of Western civilization disagreed on many things, to a person they understood that higher education can only be higher if it enables students to wrestle with controversy. Limiting inquiry and/or embracing relativism tends to produce a public settlement that is quieter than it is good.

By working from first principles about private virtue and the common good – for example’s our Savior’s admonishment to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or Aristotle’s simple yet wise precept that “Happiness comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning or training,” we strive to prepare our students, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, to be capable “of establishing good government from reflection and choice,” rather than history’s default position of leaving things to “accident and force.”

In sum, we believe that if young men and women are to be peacemakers as God has called them, they must be prepared to become virtuous citizens in the public square, able and willing to engage in lively and spirited debate with others, with the common good as their standard and the love of neighbor as their end.