The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute exists to promote Catholic truth in our contemporary world by strengthening the intellectual formation of Christians at universities, in the Church, and in the wider public square. The thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Universal Doctor of the Church, is our touchstone. The Thomistic Institute Podcast features the lectures and talks from our conferences, campus chapters events, intellectual retreats, livestream events, and much more. Founded in 2009, the Thomistic Institute is part of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC.
The Seven Deadly Sins - Prof. David Elliot
Prof. David Elliot draws on Aquinas, Gregory the Great, and the desert monastic tradition to present the seven capital vices — pride (their queen and root), vainglory, envy, wrath, avarice, sloth, lust, and gluttony — as "gateway vices" whose strategic targeting, through their opposite virtues and spiritual training, uproots dozens of further sins in the Christian's journey toward the heavenly homeland.
This lecture was given on March 24th, 2026, at University of Arizona.
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St .Thomas Aquinas’ Spiritual Exegesis of the Mass - Fr. John Saward
Fr. John Saward presents Aquinas's Summa III, q.83 as a "spiritual exegesis" of the Mass, showing how the Angelic Doctor reads the rites, words, and ceremonies of the Mass as signs that both signify and make present the saving mysteries of Christ's passion, grounded in the real presence and in the priest's acting in persona Christi.
This lecture was given on May 18th, 2026, at University of Oxford.
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The Seven Gifts in Christ and the Saints - Fr. John Mark Solitario
This lecture was given on April 25th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. John Mark Solitario is from St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in West Springfield, MA and the eldest of four children. After attending Catholic schools through high school, he earned his bachelor of arts from Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. Desiring to contribute to Catholic education, he was admitted to the PACT (Providence Alliance of Catholic...
Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Suited to Human Perfection - Fr. John Mark Solitario, O.P.
Fr. John Mark Solitario explains the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit as stable infused dispositions that render the soul responsive to the Holy Spirit's promptings, completing the virtues by introducing a divine mode of acting, and shows that they are necessary for salvation and Christian perfection because human reason, even healed by grace, remains susceptible to folly and ignorance.
This lecture was given on April 25th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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Living Your Best Priesthood: Charity and Religion - Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett
Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett argues that "living your best priesthood" consists not in natural self-improvement but in the exercise of two infused virtues: charity, the friendship with God by which he communicates his beatitude to us and the fire of Christ's own priestly self-offering, and religion, the virtue of reverencing God and rendering him the worship that is his due.
This lecture was given on March 28th, 2026, at St. Albert Priory.
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The Work of our Redemption: Taking Part in the Sacrifice of Christ - Prof. Bruce Marshall
Prof. Bruce Marshall argues that the Mass is a truly propitiatory sacrifice in which Christ's once-for-all offering on the cross is made present (not repeated) and given into the hands of the Church to be offered by priest and people together, so that by their active participation, the lay faithful share in Christ's eternal priesthood and the work of our redemption.
This lecture was given on March 28th, 2026, at St. Albert's Priory.
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'Experimentum' in Aquinas: How all Knowledge of Nature Begins in the Interior Senses - Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P.
Fr. Thomas Davenport corrects two misunderstandings of Aristotelian-Thomistic epistemology — the caricature that Aquinas relies on an intuition of essences and the oversimplification that the agent intellect automatically abstracts universals from phantasms — by recovering Aquinas's notion of experimentum, an ordered, pre-universal knowledge produced by the cogitative power's active collatio of particular intentions stored in memory, which prepares the phantasm for abstraction and shows that all knowledge of nature begins in the interior senses.
This lecture was given on July 16th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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An Introduction to Thomistic Philosophy of Nature - Prof. Ryan Miller
Prof. Ryan Miller offers an introductory overview of the foundational terminology of Thomistic philosophy of nature — potency and act, the four causes, per se versus per accidens, the categories of substance, accident, and relation, and nature versus instrument — illustrating each distinction with modern scientific analogies and everyday examples like the conductor, combustion, phonemes, ionization, model species.
This lecture was given on July 16th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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Art that reveals Nature: A Thomistic Account of Scientific Experiments and Instruments - Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P.
Fr. Thomas Davenport argues against the Thomist intuition that artifice obscures nature, showing from Aquinas's account of art and artifacts that artificial forms are accidental forms rooted in the natural active and passive powers of substances, so that scientific instruments and experiments reveal rather than distort the natures they investigate.
This lecture was given on July 18th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Thomas...
The Mystery of Beauty - Dr. Sarah E. Maple
Dr. Sarah E. Maple asks how we acquire an organic vision of beauty that is not merely material or visual, arguing from Aquinas's formal criteria of beauty (proportion, integrity, clarity) and Hans Urs von Balthasar's theological aesthetics (form and splendor, beholding and enrapture) that beauty belongs first to the human person, and that the artist's vocation is grounded in wonder, self-gift, and the sincerity of the body, culminating in a spirituality of artistic service.
This lecture was given on April 21st, 2026, at University of Georgia.
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The War on Beauty - Fr. Gabriel Torretta, O.P.
Fr. Gabriel Torretta argues that beauty has become a "forbidden word" for our age due to the effects of German Idealism and Modernism; as a remedy, he proposes a recovery grounded in the Christian metaphysical tradition (Eriugena, Aquinas, Augustine), in which beauty is the attractive power by which God draws all things to himself and which requires an asceticism of the gaze.
This lecture was given on April 28th, 2026, at University of Washington.
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On the Via Pulchritudinis: Pope Benedict XVI’s Meditations on Art and Prayer - Fr. Alan O'Sullivan, O.P.
Fr. Alan O'Sullivan provides an introduction to Pope Benedict XVI's thought on the "via pulchritudinis" — the way of beauty — arguing that authentic beauty wounds the heart and draws it toward the transcendent Logos, is inseparable from truth, goodness, and prayer, and is indispensable for the Church's liturgy and evangelization against a false, self-absorbing beauty.
This lecture was given on July 18th, 2026, at Glencomeragh House.
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Fr...
Purifying the Imagination: Iconoclasm and the Incarnation - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy argues that the Exodus prohibition on graven images was a purification of Israel's imagination from false imaginings of the invisible God, and that the Incarnation opens a new, positive use of sacred images — the face of Christ and the icons of his saints — by which the imagination is fed and purified for contemplation, a truth vindicated by Saint John Damascene and the Second Council of Nicaea against the iconoclasts.
This lecture was given on July 19th, 2026, at Glencomeragh House.
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Iconoclastic and Incarnational Church Architecture - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy argues that church architecture is "incarnational" when it corresponds to a true cosmological vision of reality ordered through and toward the Logos and embodies the principles revealed to Moses on Sinai, and "iconoclastic" when, in its modernist self-referentiality, it rejects that order and fails to communicate the body and head of Christ made present in the liturgy.
This lecture was given on July 19th, 2026, at Glencomeragh House.
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Aquinas on Conscience as the Application of Knowledge to Practice - Fr. David Goodill, O.P.
Fr. David Goodill explains that, for Aquinas, conscience is not a power of the soul but an act of the intellect rooted in the natural habit of synderesis and formed by the virtues, above all prudence, so that it reflects the deepest interiority of the person.
This lecture was given on July 24th, 2026, at Stonyhurst College.
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Fr. David is Dean of Degrees, Lector, Fellow...
Aquinas on Conscience and the Inner Act of the Will - Fr. David Goodill, O.P.
Fr. David Goodill expounds Aquinas's treatment of conscience in Summa theologiae I-II, q.19, arguing that conscience is the inner act of the will and that, even when erring, it binds the agent, such that right formation of conscience through virtue, law, and grace is essential.
This lecture was given on July 24th, 2026, at Stonyhurst College.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. David is Dean of Degrees, Lector, Fellow, and...
Conscience Girst, and to the Pope Afterwards - Prof. Lewis Ayres
This lecture was given on July 24th, 2026, at Stonyhurst College.
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About the Speaker:
Lewis was born in the UK, and studied Classics at St Andrews in Scotland, and Theology at Oxford. He has taught in the UK, in Ireland and in the US. He is currently Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the UK, and McDonald Agape Chair in Early Christian Theology at the Angelicum University in Rome...
Newman Against Hitler: Reflections on Ratzinger - Prof. Lewis Ayres
This lecture was given on July 25th, 2026, at Stonyhurst College.
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About the Speaker:
Lewis was born in the UK, and studied Classics at St Andrews in Scotland, and Theology at Oxford. He has taught in the UK, in Ireland and in the US. He is currently Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the UK, and McDonald Agape Chair in Early Christian Theology at the Angelicum University in Rome...
Imagination and Conscience - Prof. Medi Volpe
Prof. Medi Volpe argues that conscience is formed through the imagination, which is nurtured and filled by stories, so that discerning right action is less a matter of weighing propositions than of recognizing one's part in a larger story.
This lecture was given on July 25th, 2026, at Stonyhurst College.
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About the Speaker:
Medi Ann Volpe is a Catholic moral theologian and mother of four children, including a...
Conscience in Everyday Life - Prof. Medi Volpe
Prof. Medi Volpe argues that conscience is not an abstract faculty but an everyday moral sense that must be awakened and nurtured, and that grace works through ordinary channels — stories, scripture, friends, and even our failures — to form us, little by little, into people who listen and obey.
This lecture was given on July 26th, 2026, at Stonyhurst College.
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About the Speaker:
Medi Ann Volpe is a Catholic mora...
Aquinas' Epistemology with Reflections from a Friar-Medical Doctor - Fr. Chris Gault, O.P.
Fr. Chris Gault, O.P. lays out Aquinas's epistemology of moderate realism, in which all knowledge begins with the senses and the agent intellect abstracts universal forms from phantasms, and defends it against skepticism, ancient and modern, including the claim that artificial intelligence cannot truly know.
This lecture was given on July 18th, 2026, at Glencomeragh House.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Chris Vincent Gault, OP, was born and...
Sanctity and the Discipline of Study - Fr. Ambrose Little, O.P.
This lecture was given on June 26th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Ambrose Little is the director of the Thomistic Institute. He is originally from Connecticut and entered the Dominican Order in 2007 and was ordained a priest in 2013. Before entering the Dominican Order, he graduated from The Catholic University of America with a BA in philosophy. After ordination, he completed a Licentiate in Philosophy at The Catholic University o...
Justification According to St. Thomas - Prof. Erik Dempsey
Prof. Erik Dempsey explains St. Thomas Aquinas’s account of justification as God’s free gift of grace, which heals sin, moves human freedom, and forms believers in faith working through charity.
This lecture was given on March 21st, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Professor Erik Dempsey an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Departments of Government, Classics, and Religious Studies, and is the Assi...
Shakespeare and Aquinas on Kinds of Knowing - Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak, O.P.
Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak shows how Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure exposes the limits of abstract knowledge and reveals why some truths can only be known through love, experience, and particular relationship.
This lecture was given on April 11th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist and an Assistant Pr...
Shakespeare and Aquinas on Prudence, Part Two - Fr. Jordan Zajac
Fr. Jordan Zajac takes Shakespeare’s most morally charged characters and Aquinas’s deepest insights on love, hatred, and prudence to show why holiness sometimes means not just loving the good, but fiercely refusing what corrupts it.
This lecture was given on April 10th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Jordan is from New Bedford, MA and graduated from Providence College in 2004, majoring in Engl...
Shakespeare and Aquinas on Prudence, Part One - Fr. Jordan Zajac
Fr. Jordan Zajac uses Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Aquinas’s account of prudence to show how a person can know the good, reject it in imagination, and still fall into action through an inner collapse of judgment and will.
This lecture was given on April 10th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Jordan is from New Bedford, MA and graduated from Providence College in 2004, majo...
The Priesthood of Christ and Your Beatitude - Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P.
Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P., explains how Christ’s eternal priesthood fulfills the human desire for beatitude by reconciling humanity to God through his self-offering and drawing believers into the life of heaven.
This lecture was given on March 28th, 2026, at St. Albert's Priory.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P. is an Assistant Professor of Theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Th...
Words Matter: Thomas Aquinas on the Philosophy of Language - Prof. Catherine Peters
Prof. Catherine Peters unpacks Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of language and reveals how the words we use do more than describe reality: they shape what we understand, how we judge, and how we act.
This lecture was given on April 1st, 2026, at University of California, Los Angeles.
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About the Speaker:
Catherine Peters is an associate professor of medieval philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He...
If God Doesn’t Exist, Science is Impossible - Dr. Wes Siscoe
Dr. Wes Siscoe tackles a big question in science and philosophy, arguing that the very fact that nature follows stable, intelligible laws points beyond brute fact and toward God as the deeper explanation.
This lecture was given on April 14th, 2026, at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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About the Speaker:
Wes Siscoe is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University. He is also a Thomistic Institute alum...
Thomas Aquinas on Vocational Discernment - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy brings Aquinas into the urgent modern conversation about vocation, showing why the path to a call is not endless hesitation but a grace-filled, courageous movement toward charity and the life God is asking of us.
This lecture was given on April 15th, 2026, at University of South Florida.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, OP is a Coordinator for Campus Outreach at the Thomistic Institute...
Can Computers Think? - Prof. Steven Jensen
Prof. Steven Jensen asks whether computers can really think, and he argues that while machines can imitate reasoning and behavior associated with thought, they lack the awareness that makes genuine thinking possible.
This lecture was given on April 16th, 2026, at Southern Methodist University.
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About the Speaker:
Steven J Jensen holds the Bishop Nold Chair in Graduate Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, where he teaches...
What is Truth? - Prof. Paige Hochschild
Prof. Paige Hochschild explores what truth is and shows, through Tolkien, how truth arises from the mind’s encounter with reality, how myth can reveal historical meaning, and how truthful storytelling can shape moral vision.
This lecture was given on April 16th, 2026, at Williams College.
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About the Speaker:
Dr. Paige Hochschild is a professor of historical and systematic theology at Mount St. Mary's University (MD), specializing in Au...
The Catholic Faith and Golf - Prof. Michael Pakaluk
Prof. Michael Pakaluk compares Catholicism and golf in order to show how a game often dismissed as “useless” can become a surprisingly rich school of virtue, shaping humility, patience, prudence, honesty, and love of tradition.
This lecture was given on April 17th, 2026, at Ohio State University.
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About the Speaker:
Michael Pakaluk is Professor of Political Economy at The Catholic University of America. An accomplished Aristotle scholar and exper...
Do You Need to be Smart to be Holy? - Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.
This lecture was given on June 27th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P., is an instructor of dogmatic and moral theology at the Dominican House of Studies and the Assistant Director of the Thomistic Institute. He holds a doctorate from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He is the author of Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly and Your Eucharistic Identity: A Sacramental Guide to the Fullness...
Contemplating the Presence of God - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy shows how Thomas Aquinas helps Catholics contemplate the presence of God in nature, grace, and the Incarnation, so that ordinary prayer and daily life become occasions for deeper awareness of divine closeness.
This lecture was given on April 17th, 2026, at Vanderbilt University.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P. is a Coordinator for Campus Outreach at the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC. He...
St. Leo the Great on Love of the Poor and the Weak - Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.
This lecture was given on May 3rd, 2026, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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About the Speaker:
Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., (Ph.D. Notre Dame) is professor of patristics and ancient languages at the Pontifical Faculty of the Dominican House of Studies where he serves as the director of the doctoral program. He authored Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus (Oxford University Press, 2013) and The Power of Patristic Preaching...
Action, Thought, and Decision-Making - Dr. Joshua Hochschild
Dr. Joshua Hochschild asks how action, thought, and decision-making fit together, and he shows that prudent choice is the uniquely human act that unites intellect, desire, and moral formation under the guidance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
This lecture was given on June 25th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he...
The Work of Our Redemption Is Accomplished: Thomas Aquinas and the Sacrifice of the Mass - Fr. Innocent Smith, O.P.
This lecture was given on March 6th, 2026, at University of California, Berkeley.
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About the Speaker:
Innocent Smith, O.P., is Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. After undergraduate studies in music and philosophy at Notre Dame, he entered the Order of Preachers in 2008 and was ordained priest in 2015. Fr. Innocent served in parish ministry for several years before completing a doctorate in liturgical studies at the University of...
How Can I be a Holy Scientist? - Dr. Karin Öberg & Dr. Paul LaPenna
Dr. Karin Öberg and Dr. Paul LaPenna take up a deceptively simple question—how can a scientist be holy?—and show how the pursuit of truth in creation can become a path to humility, charity, and wonder before God.
This lecture was given on June 27th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Professor Öberg obtained her B.Sc. in Chemistry from Caltech and her Ph.D. in...
How Did Study Sanctify St. Thomas Aquinas? / How Does Study Sanctify Me? - Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P. & Sr. Anna Wray, O.P.
Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett and Sr. Anna Wray ask the question "How did study sanctify St. Thomas Aquinas?" St. Thomas serves as an exemplar of how study becomes holy when it is ordered by charity, tempered by right desire, and lived as a way of being with God.
This lecture was given on June 27th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.
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About the Speaker:
Fr Thomas Aquinas Pickett...
