The Thomistic Institute

Dr. Robert McNamara presents Edith Stein and Thomistic personalism as a unified vision in which the human face reveals the mystery of the person as both substantial “what” and subjective “who,” integrating Aquinas’s account of rational nature with phenomenological insights into consciousness, interiority, and personal encounter. This lecture was given on March 6th, 2025, at Farm Street Church. For...

Prof. W. Scott Cleveland explains how food and alcohol can either undermine or promote true happiness, arguing that gluttony is a disordered desire for the pleasures of eating and drinking that disrupts health, friendship, and virtuous living rather than their proper role in a flourishing, festal life. This lecture was given on November 13th, 2025, at University of Alabama. For more information on...

Dr. R.J. Snell argues that the real epidemic behind student anxiety, boredom, and frenzied achievement is not laziness but sloth—a refusal of responsibility and a sadness at the divine good—that resists joy, commitment, and genuine happiness. This lecture was given on December 1st, 2025, at New York University. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-ev...

Fr. Gregory Pine shows how money, pleasure, and influence all fail as ultimate goals and argues that true happiness comes from living in accord with our nature as creatures made for communion with God through the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. This lecture was given on November 19th, 2025, at University of South Florida. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomis...

Prof. Jerome Foss argues that what Americans call the “Bill of Rights” is not a true bill of rights but a set of constitutional amendments best understood within a Federalist—and broadly Thomistic—vision of law, liberty, and the common good that resists reducing politics to individual rights talk. This lecture was given on November 4th, 2025, at Washington & Lee University. For more informatio...

Prof. Joshua Hochschild shows how St. John Henry Newman’s lifelong “struggle against liberalism” is best understood as an Aristotelian critique of false views of knowledge, in which liberalism reduces religion to private sentiment and denies the knowability of first principles, rather than as a merely political or ecclesiastical stance. This lecture was given on October 9th, 2025, at University of...

Fr. Anselm Ramelow explains how, in a Thomistic framework, miracles are graded by how they surpass nature and why only God can perform the highest-level miracles of creation and resurrection, while finite spirits—including demons—can produce lesser “signs” that must be carefully discerned. This lecture was given on April 5th, 2025, at St. Albert's Priory. For more information on upcoming events, v...

Prof. Chad Pecknold shows how St. Augustine’s Confessions should be read as a Catholic, sacramental account of conversion in which the “altar of the heart” is turned toward God and united to Christ’s Eucharistic sacrifice, rather than as a merely emotional, garden-conversion memoir. This lecture was given on October 7th, 2025, at Vanderbilt University. For more information on upcoming events, visi...

Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy introduces the medieval Dominican mystics of the Rhineland and, in dialogue with Aquinas and Pseudo-Dionysius, shows how their often strikingly apophatic language about abyss, detachment, and “ground” can be critically integrated into a Trinitarian, Eucharistic vision of Christian mystical union. This lecture was given on May 3rd, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies. For more...

Dr. Bronwen McShea uncovers the rich but often forgotten history of Catholic women in the arts and sciences, showing how figures from late antiquity through the early modern period—nuns, scholars, patrons, and university professors—have long made serious intellectual and cultural contributions within the Catholic tradition. This lecture was given on October 16th, 2025, at The United States Naval A...

Prof. Christopher Tollefsen argues from a Thomistic natural law perspective that it is always morally wrong to intend the death of an innocent human being, contending that this absolute norm binds both private individuals and public authorities alike. This lecture was given on November 15th, 2025, at University of Florida For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/...

Prof. Marshall Bierson contrasts Thomistic Catholic ethics with utilitarian and Kantian moral theories by arguing that the good is fundamentally an activity of loving persons rather than a state of affairs like aggregate happiness or an abstract form of rational nature. This lecture was given on January 23rd, 2026, at Washington & Lee University. For more information on upcoming events, visit...

Prof. Kenneth Kemp reexamines the Scopes “Monkey Trial” to show that it has been mythologized into evidence of a supposed war between science and religion, arguing instead that the real conflicts concerned constitutional law, educational policy, and competing theological and philosophical visions within Christianity. This lecture was given on October 4th, 2023, at John Hopkins University . For mor...

Prof. Jonathan I. Lunine recounts his life as a planetary scientist, tracing how early inspirations from Carl Sagan and the space race led to his work on major NASA missions exploring the solar system and distant worlds, from Voyager and Cassini to Juno and Europa Clipper. This lecture was given on January 14th, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us...

Fr. Dominic Legge distinguishes the classical Catholic doctrine of creation from modern creationism by showing how a robust Thomistic account of God as the transcendent cause of all being avoids conflict with evolutionary science while deepening our understanding of what it means for the world to be created. This lecture was given on October 20th, 2025, at The Catholic University of America. For m...

Prof. Karin Öberg reflects on her journey from atheism to Catholicism and explains how the vocation of a Catholic scientist and professor involves uniting rigorous scientific inquiry with the Catholic intellectual tradition in order to contemplate God through creation and to renew the life of the university. This lecture was given on January 15th, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies. For more info...

Prof. Michael Dauphinais explains what contemporary culture needs to learn from Thomas Aquinas, arguing for a metaphysics of communion in which God, family, Church, and society are not locked in competition but share common goods that make each more fully alive. This lecture was given on September 22nd, 2025, at University of Florida. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomistici...

Fr. Alan O’Sullivan unpacks Aquinas on the good life, explaining why wealth, power, fame, and pleasure cannot be our ultimate happiness and how true beatitude is found in virtuous activity ordered to God. This lecture was given on October 23rd, 2025, at Trinity College Dublin. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events . About the Speakers: Fr. Alan...

Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy introduces Aquinas’ Five Ways, showing how arguments from motion, causality, contingency, gradation, and teleology lead from everyday experience to the rational conclusion that God exists as first mover, first cause, necessary being, supreme perfection, and intelligent governor. This lecture was given on May 8th, 2025, at North Dakota State University. For more information on...

Prof. Christopher Tollefsen explains John Paul II on euthanasia, showing how the Pope’s vision of human life as a sacred gift, bearing God’s image and destined for eternal friendship with Him, rules out any claim to a right to kill oneself or others. This lecture was given on September 23rd, 2025, at University of South Carolina. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstit...

Fr. Anton ten Klooster explores St. Thomas Aquinas on the Beatitudes, showing how they map an ordered, grace‑filled path of virtues and gifts that lead from imperfect happiness in this life to perfect union with God in the next. This lecture was given on November 3rd, 2025, at Oxford University. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events . About the...

Dr. Jan Bentz explores what it means to engage politics as a Catholic, calling believers to critical thinking rooted in truth, a both‑and logic that resists polarization, and a discerning love of nation that remains ordered to the common good and eternal beatitude. This lecture was given on November 19th, 2025, at Thomistic Institute in London. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at...

Prof. Marshall Bierson unpacks Elizabeth Anscombe’s moral absolutism, arguing that questions like “Why is it worse to kill one innocent person than to let five die?” rest on a grammatical confusion that obscures the absolute wrongness of intentionally killing the innocent. This lecture was given on October 2nd, 2025, at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more information on upcoming e...

Prof. Kevin Kambo reflects on race, racism, and antiracism through Augustine, showing how modern racial categories operate as idolatrous myths born of the lust to dominate and calling listeners to see others instead as icons of God rather than instruments of civic or ideological projects. This lecture was given on October 24th, 2025, at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village. For more informatio...

Prof. Chad Pecknold explains how Augustine and Aquinas argue against skepticism, defending metaphysical realism and the mind’s capacity to know truth as essential for genuine morality and for leading people to Christ, who is Truth itself. This lecture was given on October 23rd, 2025, at Franciscan University of Steubenville. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.o...