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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. Website: https://podcast.thomisticinstitute.org/
1753 sermons
All sermons
- Why the Roman Catholic Church?
Feb 13, 2023 • 1h 2m
Professor Paige Hochschild discusses the necessity of the Roman Catholic Church, emphasizing its divine origin, the importance of community and unity, and how it serves as a dwelling place for God's majesty through prayer, liturgy, and sacraments. This lecture was given on November 15, 2022, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Dr. Paige Hochschild is a professor of historical and systematic theology at Mount St. Mary's University (MD), specializing in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and the early Church. She also teaches philosophy courses at the Seminary at Mount St. Mary's. She has written a book on the place of memory in Augustine's theological anthropology, and publishes on the Church, education, tradition, 20th c. theological debates within the Church (Scripture, history; marriage).
- The Myth of Dante's Thomism? Reading Aquinas and Dante with the Dominicans
Feb 10, 2023 • 1h 6m
This talk was given on November 12th, 2022, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Prof. George Corbett (University of St. Andrews) is Professor of Theology, and Director of Research at the School of Divinity. He has two principal areas of research and teaching: Theology and the Arts (with a focus on the theologian-poet Dante Alighieri) and Historical and Systematic Theology (with a focus on Aquinas’s theology and its influence, and on Catholic theology).
- Can Philosophy Prepare You for Death? w/ Sr. Elinor Gardner, O.P.
Feb 9, 2023 • 45 min
Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. of Aquinas 101, Godsplaining, and Pints with Aquinas for an off-campus conversation with Sr. Elinor Gardner about her latest Thomistic Institute, "So Death doth touch the Resurrection’: Death and Human Nature." Can Philosophy Prepare Us for Death? w/ Sr. Elinor Gardner, O.P. and Fr. Gregory Pine (Off-Campus Conversations) You can listen to the original lecture here: https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/so-death-doth-touch-the-resurrection-death-and-human-nature-sr-elinor-gardner-op/s-6yzNWufbIfe For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Sister Elinor Gardner is a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia. Before arriving at University of Dallas, she taught at Aquinas College in Nashville, TN and at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Her doctoral work (Boston College) was on the ethics of Thomas Aquinas ("St Thomas Aquinas on the Death Penalty").
- 'So Death doth touch the Resurrection': Death and Human Nature | Sr. Elinor Gardner, O.P.
Feb 8, 2023 • 56 min
This lecture was given on November 17, 2022, at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Sister Elinor Gardner is a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia. Before arriving at University of Dallas, she taught at Aquinas College in Nashville, TN and at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Her doctoral work (Boston College) was on the ethics of Thomas Aquinas ("St Thomas Aquinas on the Death Penalty").
- From Vices to Virtues to Gifts: Aquinas and Dante on Sanctification | Fr. Albert Trudel, O.P.
Feb 8, 2023 • 44 min
This lecture was given on November 12, 2022, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., as part of the intellectual retreat entitled, "Aquinas & Dante." For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Fr. Albert Trudel, O.P. (Dominican House of Studies) specializes in the intersection between theology and literature in the Middle Ages, and has lately commented on Dante's Purgatorio and the Middle English Pearl for various Thomistic Institute projects. He completed his Master's degree in English Literature at the University of Toronto, his doctoral work in English Literature at the University of Oxford, and he received a postdoctoral License in Mediaeval Studies at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. He is an Assistant Professor of Latin and Pastoral Studies at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He is also the Rome Director for the Thomistic Institute's semester abroad program.
- The Spiritual Geography of the Afterlife: Aquinas and Dante | Fr. Albert Trudel, O.P.
Feb 7, 2023 • 1h 10m
This lecture was given on November 11, 2022, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., as part of the intellectual retreat entitled, "Aquinas and Dante." For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Fr. Albert Trudel, O.P., specializes in the intersection between theology and literature in the Middle Ages, and has lately commented on Dante's Purgatorio and the Middle English Pearl for various Thomistic Institute projects. He completed his Master's degree in English Literature at the University of Toronto, his doctoral work in English Literature at the University of Oxford, and he received a postdoctoral License in Mediaeval Studies at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. He is an Assistant Professor of Latin and Pastoral Studies at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He is also the Rome Director for the Thomistic Institute's semester abroad program.
- Passionate Intellects: Aquinas, Dante, and the Love of Wisdom
Feb 7, 2023 • 1h 11m
This lecture was given on November 11, 2022, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Prof. George Corbett (University of St. Andrews) is Professor of Theology, and Director of Research at the School of Divinity. He has two principal areas of research and teaching: Theology and the Arts (with a focus on the theologian-poet Dante Alighieri) and Historical and Systematic Theology (with a focus on Aquinas’s theology and its influence, and on Catholic theology).
- Does Tradition Live? Do Doctrines 'Develop'?
Feb 3, 2023 • 1h 23m
This lecture was given on November 17, 2022, at Trinity College Dublin. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Lewis Ayres is Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He specializes in the study of early Christian theology, especially the history of Trinitarian theology and early Christian exegesis. He is also deeply interested in the relationship between the shape of early Christian modes of discourse and reflection and the manner in which renewals of Catholic theology during the last hundred years have attempted to engage forms of modern historical consciousness and sought to negotiate the shape of appropriate scriptural interpretation in modernity, even as they remain faithful to the practices of classical Catholic discourse and contemplation. His publications include Augustine and the Trinity (2010) and Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Trinitarian Theology (2004). He is co-editor of the Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (2004) and of the Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology (forthcoming). Professor Ayres has co-edited the Blackwell Challenges in Contemporary Theology series (since 1997), the Ashgate Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity series (since 2007), and has just co-founded with Fortress Press the Renewal: Conversations in Catholic Theology series. He serves on the editorial boards of Modern Theology, the Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Augustinian Studies. He has also served on the board of the North American Patristics Society.
- Does Neuroscience Disprove Free Will?
Feb 2, 2023 • 1h 5m
This lecture was given on November 10th, 2022, at the University of Rochester. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Prof. James Madden is Professor of Philosophy at Benedictine College. He lives in Atchison, Kansas with his wife (Jennifer) and their six children; William, Martha, J. Patrick, Brendan, Jack, and Cormac. He is originally from Wisconsin, where he received a B.A. from St. Norbert College, and did his graduate work at Kent State (MA, 1998) and Purdue (Ph.D., 2002). He was awarded the Benedictine College Distinguished Educator of the Year Award in 2006. In addition to usual general education courses in philosophy (Logic, Principles of Nature, Ethics, and Philosophical Psychology), Dr. Madden typically teaches courses in modern philosophy, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion.
- It's My Right: What Are Natural Rights and What Rights Do We Have?
Jan 31, 2023 • 1h 10m
This lecture was given on November 9, 2022, at Regent University. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Dr. Trabbic is associate professor of philosophy at Ave Maria University, where he has taught since 2006. He earned his PhD in philosophy from Fordham University in 2008. His areas of interest include Aquinas, continental philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. He has published his work in various academic journals, including Religious Studies, The Heythrop Journal, and New Blackfriars.
- Love in Person—in the Trinity and in Our Souls | Fr. John Baptist Ku, O.P.
Jan 30, 2023 • 54 min
Fr. Ku's handout can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/2p88mf28 This lecture was given on November 9, 2022, at Trinity University. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Fr. John Baptist Ku, O.P., was born in Manhattan (1965) and grew up in Fairfax, Virginia. After graduating from the University of Virginia, he worked at AT&T for five years before entering the Dominican Order in 1992. After serving for three years in St. Pius Parish in Providence, R.I., he completed his doctoral studies at the University of Fribourg in 2009. 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 (the faculty’s journal), chaplain to commuter students, and chaplain to the Immaculate Conception Chapter of Third Order Dominicans, and assistant student master. He served as student master and subprior at St. Dominic Priory from 2015-2018, and is currently the subprior.
- Made for Another: John Paul II's Theology of the Body and Thomas Aquinas | Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P.
Jan 27, 2023 • 1h 8m
This lecture was given on December 5, 2022, at St. Charles Catholic Church in Arlington, Virginia. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Father Thomas Petri, O.P. is the President of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies, where he also serves as an assistant professor of moral theology and pastoral studies. Ordained a priest in 2009, he holds a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from The Catholic University of America.
- Is It Possible to Have Productive Conversations About Abortion? w
Jan 26, 2023 • 42 min
Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. of Aquinas 101, Godsplaining, and Pints with Aquinas for an off-campus conversation with Dr. Angela Knobel about her latest Thomistic Institute, "The Philosophy of the Abortion Debate." The Philosophy of the Abortion Debate w/ Dr. Angela Knobel and Fr. Gregory Pine (Off-Campus Conversations) You can listen to the original lecture here: https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/the-philosophy-of-the-abortion-debate-prof-angela-knobel For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Angela Knobel is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. She received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2004. From 2004 to 2020, she taught philosophy at her alma mater, the Catholic University of America. Her work focuses primarily on Aquinas’ theory of infused virtue, virtue ethics and applied ethics. Her book Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues is forthcoming from the University of Notre Dame Press.
- May Life-Sustaining Treatment Be Withheld or Withdrawn?
Jan 25, 2023 • 42 min
This lecture was given on December 2, 2022, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Gina Maria Noia is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Resident Bioethicist at Belmont Abbey College. She received her Ph.D. in Theology and Health Care Ethics from Saint Louis University. She has served as a clinical ethicist for OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, IL and St. Alexius Hospital in St. Louis, MO, and she is published in Christian Bioethics and the Journal of Moral Theology. She and her husband, Justin, love spending time with their vivacious one-year-old boy.
- Reason, Grace, and Law: Suarez and Hobbes on Coercion, Church, and State
Jan 24, 2023 • 53 min
This lecture was given on October 27, 2022, at Harvard University. For more information, visit thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Professor Thomas Pink read history and philosophy at Cambridge, where he also received his PhD. After working for four years in London and New York for a City merchant bank, he returned to philosophy in 1990 as a Research Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He then lectured at Sheffield University prior to moving to King's in 1996. Professor Pink’s main interests are in ethics, philosophy of mind and action, philosophy of law, and in medieval and early modern philosophy. He is currently writing on the free will problem - his Free Will: A Very Short Introduction is published by Oxford University Press in June 2004. He is also working on the nature of moral normativity. Forthcoming on this topic, also from Oxford University Press, is his two volume The Ethics of Action. He is an editor of London Studies in the History of Philosophy, and is also editing The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, containing the Hobbes-Bramhall controversy on free will, for the Clarendon Edition of the works of Hobbes.
- Justice and the Common Good According to St. Thomas Aquinas | Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.
Jan 23, 2023 • 1h 3m
This talk was given on November 8, 2022, at the University of Virginia. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: A native of Louisiana, Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P. entered the Province of St. Joseph in 2005. After several years of pastoral work in New York City, Fr. Guilbeau began doctoral studies in moral theology at the University of Fribourg, where he completed a dissertation in moral theology. His topic was Charles De Koninck’s doctrine of the common good. In addition to his teaching, Fr. Guilbeau is prior of the Dominican House of Studies.
- Classical and Christian Perspectives on Love and Friendship
Jan 20, 2023 • 47 min
This talk was given on October 28, 2022, at the Thomistic Institute Chapter in New York City. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Philosophy, Politics and Economics 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.
- Joyful Resistance
Jan 19, 2023 • 1h
This talk was given on December 4, 2022, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., as part of the intellectual retreat entitled, "Avoiding Acedia." For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: R.J. Snell is Editor-in-Chief of Public Discourse and Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute. Previously, he was for many years Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy Program at Eastern University and the Templeton Honors College, where he founded and directed the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good. He earned his M.A. in philosophy at Boston College, and his Ph.D. in philosophy at Marquette University. His research interests include the liberal arts, ethics, natural law theory, Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic intellectual tradition, and the work of Bernard Lonergan, SJ. Snell is the author of Through a Glass Darkly: Bernard Lonergan and Richard Rorty on Knowing without a God’s-eye View (Marquette, 2006), Authentic Cosmopolitanism (with Steve Cone, Pickwick, 2013), The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode (Pickwick, 2014), Acedia and Its Discontents (Angelico, 2015), and co-editor of Subjectivity: Ancient and Modern (Lexington, 2016) and Nature: Ancient and Modern (Lexington), as well as articles, chapters, and essays in a variety of scholarly and popular venues. He and his family reside in the Princeton area.
- Acedia II: Human Sorrow, Divine Mercy: An Exploration in Catholic Art
Jan 18, 2023 • 58 min
Prof. Hibbs' slides can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/5xnw4dv8 This talk was given on December 3, 2022, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., as part of the intellectual retreat entitled, "Avoiding Acedia." For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Thomas Hibbs is currently President of the University of Dallas, his alma mater. With degrees from the University of Dallas and the University of Notre Dame, Hibbs taught at Boston College (BC) for 13 years, where he was full professor and department chair in philosophy. At BC, he also served on the Steering Committee for BC's Initiative for the Future of the Church and on the Sub-Committee on Catholic Sexual Teaching. For 16 years, Hibbs was Distinguished Professor of Ethics & Culture and Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University. Hibbs has written scholarly books on Aquinas, including Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles, and a book on popular culture entitled Shows About Nothing. Hibbs has recently published scholarly articles on MacIntyre and Aquinas (Review of Politics), on Anselm (Anselm Studies), and on Pascal (International Philosophical Quarterly). He also has written on film, culture, books and higher education in Books and Culture, Christianity Today, First Things, New Atlantis, The Dallas Morning News, The National Review, The Weekly Standard, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, for which his latest piece is a study of the ethical implications of the films of the Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski.
- Acedia I: How Our Sorrows Determine the State of Our Souls
Jan 17, 2023 • 56 min
This talk was given on December 3, 2022, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., as part of the intellectual retreat entitled, "Avoiding Acedia." For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Thomas Hibbs is currently President of the University of Dallas, his alma mater. With degrees from the University of Dallas and the University of Notre Dame, Hibbs taught at Boston College (BC) for 13 years, where he was full professor and department chair in philosophy. At BC, he also served on the Steering Committee for BC's Initiative for the Future of the Church and on the Sub-Committee on Catholic Sexual Teaching. For 16 years, Hibbs was Distinguished Professor of Ethics & Culture and Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University. Hibbs has written scholarly books on Aquinas, including Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles, and a book on popular culture entitled Shows About Nothing. Hibbs has recently published scholarly articles on MacIntyre and Aquinas (Review of Politics), on Anselm (Anselm Studies), and on Pascal (International Philosophical Quarterly). He also has written on film, culture, books and higher education in Books and Culture, Christianity Today, First Things, New Atlantis, The Dallas Morning News, The National Review, The Weekly Standard, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, for which his latest piece is a study of the ethical implications of the films of the Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski.