What Our Students Say
Dermot Dowdall

Graduate

"New friends for life have been forged as we endlessly explore how the wonderful minds of the past apply to our age. "

 My thirty-three year career with Dublin Fire Brigade ended sooner that I had hoped due to injury and a phase of physical recovery might have dominated my mind had I not had the good fortune to find that the structure that the Priory Institute offered would allow me to balance my losses with new and interesting gains. I had no designs on the undertaking and could never have imagined the richness of it’s payback.

It has been one of the highlights of my life to study Theology at the Priory Institute. I had been drawn in my youth but it was not to be my path at that time, however the desire to hold some sort of compass on life’s voyage remained irresistible. To consult a map of our journey to date, to recognise the threats we have already encountered as a people seeking God. To identify your own place and part in this spherical jigsaw. To be confronted by your own mind blowing tininess which is instantly balanced by your own highly specific purposefulness. To become aware that the points on this compass offer options for the future for all of humanity to choose from. To become one of those whose choice is now an informed one and whose overview serves as a motive force for all humanity. This is the joy that the Priory Institute can bestow.

New friends for life have been forged as we endlessly explore how the wonderful minds of the past apply to our age. The books that come with the programme are an envy even to advanced academics. The Institution’s accessibility is compatible with the flexibility that today’s world demands. It’s teaching is such that anyone can acquire the competence to research effectively, draw constructive conclusions, and contribute worthwhile perspectives in response to the ceaseless searching of humanity, all of humanity, including those who will live in days we can’t imagine.