The Thomistic Institute

Jul 4, 2024 • 43 min

Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. of Aquinas 101, Godsplaining, and Pints with Aquinas for an off-campus conversation with Prof. Eleonore Stump about the meaning of suffering, the link between suffering and human flourishing, and the role of stories in understanding the arcs of our lives. You can watch this interview on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/TomdTsBmvDY. About the speaker: Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University. She is also Honorary Professor at Wuhan University, the Logos Institute and School of Divinity at St. Andrews, and York University; and she is a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University. She has published extensively in philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics, and medieval philosophy. Her books include Aquinas (2003), Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (2010), Atonement (2018), and The Image of God. The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Mourning (2022). She has given the Gifford Lectures (Aberdeen, 2003), the Wilde lectures (Oxford, 2006), the Stewart lectures (Princeton, 2009), and the Stanton lectures (Cambridge, 2018). In 2021, she was given the award of Johanna Quandt Young Academy Distinguished Senior Scientist by the Goethe University (Frankfurt, Germany). She is past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, Philosophers in Jesuit Education, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the American Philosophical Association, Central Division; and she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jul 3, 2024 • 42 min

This lecture was given on March 25th, 2024, at University of Texas at Austin. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Stephen L. Brock is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei (ordained 1992). He is Ordinary Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, where he began teaching in 1990.  Since 2008 he has been an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.  Since 2017 he has been a visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Chicago. He is the author of Action & Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (T&T Clark, 1998); The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (Wipf & Stock, 2015); The Light that Binds: a Study in Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics of Natural Law (Wipf & Stock, 2020); and numerous articles on various aspects of Aquinas’s thought.

Jul 1, 2024 • 45 min

This lecture was given on March 11th, 2024, at the University of California, Berkeley. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. (Dominican House of Studies) is from Pennsylvania and graduated from Franciscan University of Steubenville. He previously served as the Assistant Director of Campus Outreach for the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC, and associate pastor of St. Louis Bertrand Catholic Church in Louisville, KY where he also taught at Bellarmine University. He currently serves as an adjunct professor of dogmatic theology at the Dominican House of Studies and an Assistant Director of the Thomistic Institute. He is a contributor on the Pints with Aquinas show and a co-host of the Catholic Classics podcast. Fr. Gregory is the author of Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly (Our Sunday Visitor, 2022) and co-author with Matt Fradd of Marian Consecration With Aquinas: A Nine Day Path for Growing Closer to the Mother of God (TAN Books, 2020).

Jun 28, 2024 • 48 min

This lecture was given on April 12th, 2024, at Florida State University . For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Sister Anna Wray is a native of Connecticut and a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia of Nashville, TN. Sister received her phD in philosophy from The Catholic University of America, having written her dissertation on Aristotle’s account of the activity of contemplation. Sister is an assistant professor on the faculty of CUA's School of Philosophy in Washington, DC, where she regularly teaches courses in the history of philosophy, logic, rhetoric, ethics, philosophy of religion, and philosophical psychology. She is also an adjunct professor for Aquinas College, where she teaches metaphysics and epistemology to her sisters in formation. When time permits, sister enjoys the occasional trip that allows her to speak to (and with) others who share her loves.

Jun 27, 2024 • 47 min

This lecture was given on November 11th, 2023, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events . About the Speaker: Fr. John Baptist Ku was born in Manhattan (1965) and grew up in Fairfax, Virginia. After graduating from School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, he worked in software design at AT&T for five years before entering the Dominican Order in 1992. After obtaining his S.T.B./M.Div. (1998) and S.T.L. (2000) at the Dominican House of Studies, he served for three years in St. Pius Parish in Providence, R.I., before going on to complete his studies doctoral studies at the University of Fribourg in 2009. He was awarded the Thomas Aquinas Dissertation Prize by the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria University (2010) for his dissertation on God the Father in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. He now teaches at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., where he has also served as book review editor of The Thomist , chaplain to commuter students, and chaplain to the Immaculate Conception Chapter of Third Order Dominicans. 

Jun 26, 2024 • 48 min

This lecture was given on February 1st, 2024, at University of Oregon. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Jun 24, 2024 • 57 min

This lecture was given on January 25th, 2024, at the United States Military Academy. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Edward Feser is Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California.  He is the author of many books and academic articles on topics in natural theology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and ethics and political philosophy.

Jun 20, 2024 • 45 min

Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. of Aquinas 101, Godsplaining, and Pints with Aquinas for an off-campus conversation with Prof. Michael Pakaluk about what we can learn from Aristotle about friendship and virtue in the classical tradition, how the family helps children grow in virtue, why it's important to bear with others patiently, the healing power of sacrifice and forgiveness, and the role of natural law in social unions. You can watch this interview on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/fQB-78wUnow About the speaker: Michael Pakaluk is an internationally recognized Aristotelian scholar who studied under Quine and Putnam at Harvard while writing a dissertation on the philosophy of friendship under John Rawls. Besides several books and many articles in philosophy, he is at work on a series of interpretations of the gospels (The Memoirs of St. Peter, Mary's Voice in the Gospel According to John, and, forthcoming, "Be Good Bankers": The Divine Economy in the Gospel of Matthew). He is currently writing an intellectual autobiography and books on John Henry Newman and Natural Law. He has made important contributions to the professional ethics of accountants. Pakaluk is a regular contributor to The Catholic Thing, and his essays may be found in Crisis, Our Sunday Visitor, First Things, and other venues. He lives in Hyattsville, Maryland, with his wife, Catherine, a professor of economics, and their children. In 2011 he was appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas by Pope Benedict.

Jun 19, 2024 • 42 min

This lecture was given on February 23rd, 2024, at Claremont Colleges. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Dr. Christopher Kaczor (rhymes with razor) graduated from the Honors Program of Boston College and earned a Ph.D. four years later from the University of Notre Dame. A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Kaczor is a former Federal Chancellor Fellow at the University of Cologne and William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University and Honorary Professor in Bishop Barron's Word on Fire Institute. His seventeen books include The Gospel of Happiness, The Seven Big Myths about Marriage, A Defense of Dignity, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, The Ethics of Abortion, O Rare Ralph McInerny: Stories and Reflections on a Legendary Notre Dame Professor, Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues; Life Issues-Medical Choices; Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love; The Edge of Life, and Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Dr. Kaczor’s views have been in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, National Review, NPR, BBC, EWTN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, TEDx, and The Today Show.

Jun 18, 2024 • 41 min

This lecture was given on April 20th, 2024, at St. Albert's Priory. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Fr. Raphael Mary Salzillo, O.P. is a Dominican friar of the Western Province. Originally from Oregon, he converted to the Catholic faith in high school. He went on to study applied physics for seven years before joining the Dominican Order. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2009, and was then sent by the Order to study philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. In 2019 he moved to Houston and now teaches philosophy at the University of St. Thomas.

Jun 17, 2024 • 52 min

This lecture was given on April 20th, 2024, at St. Albert's Priory. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Dr. Christopher Kaczor (rhymes with razor) graduated from the Honors Program of Boston College and earned a Ph.D. four years later from the University of Notre Dame. A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Kaczor is a former Federal Chancellor Fellow at the University of Cologne and William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University and Honorary Professor in Bishop Barron's Word on Fire Institute. His seventeen books include The Gospel of Happiness, The Seven Big Myths about Marriage, A Defense of Dignity, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, The Ethics of Abortion, O Rare Ralph McInerny: Stories and Reflections on a Legendary Notre Dame Professor, Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues; Life Issues-Medical Choices; Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love; The Edge of Life, and Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Dr. Kaczor’s views have been in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, National Review, NPR, BBC, EWTN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, TEDx, and The Today Show.

Jun 14, 2024 • 44 min

This lecture was given on April 19th, 2024, at St. Albert's Priory. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Dr. Christopher Kaczor (rhymes with razor) graduated from the Honors Program of Boston College and earned a Ph.D. four years later from the University of Notre Dame. A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Kaczor is a former Federal Chancellor Fellow at the University of Cologne and William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University and Honorary Professor in Bishop Barron's Word on Fire Institute. His seventeen books include The Gospel of Happiness, The Seven Big Myths about Marriage, A Defense of Dignity, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, The Ethics of Abortion, O Rare Ralph McInerny: Stories and Reflections on a Legendary Notre Dame Professor, Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues; Life Issues-Medical Choices; Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love; The Edge of Life, and Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Dr. Kaczor’s views have been in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, National Review, NPR, BBC, EWTN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, TEDx, and The Today Show.

Jun 13, 2024 • 47 min

This lecture was given on April 25th, 2024, at University of Oregon. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Paul Gondreau is professor of theology at Providence College, where he has taught for 26 years. He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, doing his dissertation on Christ's full humanity (Christ's human passions/emotions) under the renowned Thomist scholar Jean-Pierre Torrell. He specializes in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and has published widely in the areas of Christology (focusing on Christ’s full humanity and his maleness), Christian anthropology, the moral meaning and purpose of human sexuality and sexual difference, the biblical vision of Aquinas' theology, the theology of disability, the sacrament of the Eucharist and the priesthood, and the Catholic vision of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Jun 12, 2024 • 54 min

This lecture was given on May 13th, 2024, at Oxford University. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at  thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Professor Marianne Schlosser works as a professor of spiritual theology at the University of Vienna. She was a member of the International Theological Commission from 2014-2019, and in 2018 received the Ratzinger prize in recognition of her work. Her main fields of research are theology, patrology, and the spirituality of the High Middle Ages, with particular emphasis on mendicant orders, the Eucharist, and the discovery of classical texts with a Christian ethos.

Jun 10, 2024 • 39 min

This lecture was given on November 4th, 2023, at The Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at  thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events 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: The Word in Our Flesh (Catholic University of America, 2023). He co-authored A Living Sacrifice: Guidance for Men Discerning Religious Life (Vianney Vocations, 2019). Editor-in-chief of the academic journal The Thomist, Hofer is editor or co-editor of several volumes including The Oxford Handbook of Deification, The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's Sermons, and Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers. He enjoys speaking with students about their theological and spiritual questions.

Jun 7, 2024 • 44 min

This lecture was given on March 26th, 2024, at North Carolina State University. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Nuno Castel-Branco is a Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He completed his Ph.D. in the history of science at Johns Hopkins University in 2021 after earning an M.Sc. in Physics at the University of Lisbon. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti in Florence and at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He has spoken about Galileo, Copernicus, and science and religion to broad audiences in the United States and Europe. His first book, The Traveling Anatomist, uses Nicolaus Steno as a tour guide for science, medicine, and religion in seventeenth-century Europe. His writing has appeared in places like the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American, as well as in research journals such as Notes and Records of the Royal Society, and Annals of Science.

Jun 6, 2024 • 49 min

Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. of Aquinas 101, Godsplaining, and Pints with Aquinas for an off-campus conversation with Prof. Michael Gorman about moral relativism and the avoidance of conflict, the importance of charitable disagreement, and how to engage in difficult conversations with charity. You can watch this interview on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/JSHeIYQI-os About the speaker: Michael Gorman is Professor of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He has doctorates in philosophy and theology, and his work covers both areas, with a special emphasis on metaphysical themes. He is the author of over thirty-five scholarly articles, a book entitled Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and a book that will appear in the spring of 2024 entitled A Contemporary Introduction to Thomistic Metaphysics (The Catholic University of America Press, 2024).

Jun 5, 2024 • 47 min

This lecture was given on April 18th, 2024, at University of Arizona. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Michael Wahl is Assistant Professor of Theology at Providence College. His research focuses on Catholic moral theology, Thomistic ethics, virtue theory, and moral development. His articles have been published in The Thomist, Nova et Vetera, and Philosophy, Theology, & the Sciences. He lives in Providence, RI with his wife and four young children.

Jun 3, 2024 • 40 min

This lecture was given on March 19th, 2024, at University of Edinburgh. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Fr. Reginald Lynch is a Dominican priest of the Province of St. Joseph and is currently an assistant professor of dogmatic and historical theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC (USA). His research has focused on a range of issues in historical and dogmatic theology, especially the sacramental theology of Thomas Aquinas. His first book, The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition appeared in the Thomistic Ressourcement series at the Catholic University of America Press in 2017. This book examines Aquinas' approach to the efficacy of the sacraments, taking into account relevant textual developments and the implications of Aquinas' account of grace and sanctification in the context of broader developments in medieval theology. His most recent monograph focuses on Aquinas' Eucharistic theology in its original textual and historical context, and the reception history of Aquinas' approach to this subject. This book, Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae and Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Early Modern Period is being published by Oxford University Press in the Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology series. Scheduled to appear in early 2024, this volume begins with Aquinas' thought in its medieval textual and historical context, and then proceeds to examine a series of later Dominican and Jesuit receptions of Aquinas' text.

May 30, 2024 • 59 min

This lecture was given on November 11th, 2023, at the Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Fr. Timothy Bellamah, O.P. (Commissio Leonina) was born and raised in Washington, D.C. He entered the Order of Preachers in 1991 and was ordained a priest in 1998. He studied at Wake Forest University (B.S., 1982), the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception (M.Div. and S.T.B., 1997; S.T.L, 1999) and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, (Ph.D., Section des sciences Religieuses, 2008). He has previously taught at Providence College in the Department of Theology and the Department of the Development of Western Civilization. From 2010 to 2018 he served as editor of the speculative review The Thomist and is a member of the Leonine Commission, a team of Dominican scholars responsible for the production of critical Latin editions of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He is also currently preparing a critical Latin edition of the Commentary on John’s Gospel by one of St. Thomas’ Dominican contemporaries, William of Alton.