The Thomistic Institute

Prof. Paul Gondreau explores the theological necessity of Christ's full humanity, arguing that by assuming a human nature complete with emotions and the capacity for suffering, Jesus provides the ultimate model for human perfection and moral integrity. This lecture was given on November 21st, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitu...

Prof. Tim Flanigan, in the face of a "conspiracy of silence" in clinical settings that discourages the expression of faith, urges medical professionals to embrace the discomfort of witnessing to their beliefs to better support their patients. This lecture was given on January 22nd, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upco...

Sr. Anna Wray, O.P. explores whether our reliance on efficiency-driven technology is hastening the death of wisdom by taking the place of human deliberation and agency. This lecture was given on February 20th, 2025, at Carnegie Mellon/University of Pittsburgh. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Sister Anna Wray is a native...

Prof. Bruce Marshall explains that through the indelible mark of baptismal character, the faithful are uniquely deputized to participate in Christ's once-for-all sacrifice through the celebration of the Eucharist. This lecture was given on March 28th, 2026, at St. Albert's Priory. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Bruce D...

Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. examines the Catholic teaching on truthfulness as an exercise of justice, defining lying as a sin that perverts the faculty of speech and undermines the common good. This lecture was given on September 10th, 2026, at The Catholic University of America. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Fr. Gregory P...

Sr. Mary Angelica Neenan, O.P. explores how the human soul’s powers of intellect and will are designed to find their ultimate fulfillment in the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty. This lecture was given on September 11th, 2026, at University of Sydney. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Sister Mary Angelica Ne...

Mr. Chris Wolter examines the fittingness of the Incarnation within the structural framework of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, with the Incarnation serving as the restorative apex of history. This lecture was given on April 16th, 2026, at University of Sydney. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Chris Wolter grew up in Adelaide...

Dr. Marvin Bolt explores the history and epistemology of scientific instruments, arguing that they are not merely passive tools but active embodiments of knowledge that require hands-on engagement to fully understand. This lecture was given on July 16th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speake...

Fr. Chris Gault, O.P. explores why St. Thomas Aquinas remains a vital guide for contemporary students, emphasizing that his systematic approach to theology fosters both intellectual clarity and a deeper interior life. This lecture was given on April 16th, 2026, at Maynooth University. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Fr....

Prof. Santiago Solares explores the technical challenges and philosophical implications of Atomic Force Microscopy, arguing that rigorous scientific practice requires both technical precision and a commitment to intellectual formation. This lecture was given on July 17th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-event...

Prof. John Brungardt explores the Aristotelian-Thomistic necessity of scientific instruments as essential tools for the human mind to investigate the cosmos and overcome the limitations of natural sensation. This lecture was given on July 17th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Dr. Joh...

Prof. Karin Öberg examines how the vocation of the scientist aligns with the Thomistic view that studying the material order is a necessary component of faith, arguing that the scientific study of the cosmos serves as a profound path to understanding God's wisdom, power, and goodness. This lecture was given on July 18th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events,...

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 hom...

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...

This lecture was given on April 25th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events 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 Chris...

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...

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 o...

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...

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 pa...

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, ionizatio...

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 Dom...

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...

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 give...

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 Jul...

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...