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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
- Creation and Evolution: Answers to Different Questions
Feb 22, 2021 • 43 min
This lecture was given on January 25, 2021 to West Virginia University. For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Kenneth W. Kemp is Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a Fellow of that University’s Center for Catholic Studies. His education includes an M.A. in the History and Philosophy of Science as well as a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. His research work has included ethics (in particular questions of morality and war) and historical and philosophical inquiry into the relations between science and religion (with a particular focus on the theory of evolution).
- Suffering, Sacrifice, and Leadership
Feb 19, 2021 • 43 min
This lecture was given on November 23, 2020 to the United States Military Academy - West Point. For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Captain Joe McInerney is the Chairman of the Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law and Permanent Military Professor of Applied Ethics at the United States Naval Academy. Captain McInerney lectures in the Naval Academy’s core ethics course, which is offered to all Third Class Midshipman (sophomores) at the Naval Academy and teaches elective courses in the fields of Christian morality and leadership. In 2016, Captain McInerney published his first book, The Greatness of Humility: St. Augustine on Moral Excellence. Captain McInerney served as a Fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy for the 2008-2009 academic year. He graduated from The Catholic University of America with a doctorate in systematic theology in October 2012 after completing a dissertation on the moral thought of St. Augustine. Captain McInerney also holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the United States Naval Academy and a Masters of Theological Studies from the Pontifical Lateran University.
- When is War Justified? A Catholic Perspective
Feb 17, 2021 • 1h 10m
This lecture was given on November 4, 2020 to University College Dublin. The slides for this lecture are available here: tinyurl.com/ydf93234 For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Joseph E. Capizzi is Ordinary Professor of Moral Theology at the Catholic University of America. He teaches in the areas of social and political theology, with special interests in issues in peace and war, citizenship, political authority, and Augustinian theology. He has written, lectured, and published widely on just war theory, bioethics, the history of moral theology, and political liberalism. Dr. Capizzi is the Executive Director of the Institute for Human Ecology at Catholic University. He received his B.A. from the University of Virginia, his Masters in Theological Studies from Emory University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame. He lives in Maryland with his wife and six children.
- Reading Scripture with Benedict and Francis
Feb 15, 2021 • 59 min
The lecture was given to the University of Edinburgh on November 10, 2020. For more information on upcoming events, 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.
- Catholicism in Contemporary Astronomy
Feb 12, 2021 • 41 min
The lecture was given to Boston University on October 27, 2020. For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Karin Öberg is Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. Her specialty is astrochemistry and her research aims to uncover how chemical processes affect the outcome of planet formation, especially the chemical habitability of nascent planets. Dr. Öberg obtained her B.Sc. in chemistry at Caltech in 2005, and her Ph.D. in astronomy, with a thesis focused on laboratory astrochemistry, from Leiden University in 2009. She did postdoctoral work at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a NASA Hubble fellow, focusing on millimeter observations of planet-forming disks around young stars. In 2013 she joined the Harvard astronomy faculty as an assistant professor. She was promoted and named the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in Astronomy in 2016, and promoted to full professor with tenure in 2017. Dr. Öberg’s research in astrochemistry has been recognized with a Sloan fellowship, a Packard fellowship, the Newton Lacy Pierce Award from the American Astronomical Society, and a Simons fellowship.
- Does God Exist? And How Could We Know?
Feb 10, 2021 • 46 min
The lecture was given to West Virginia University on October 16, 2020. For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org About the Speaker: Joshua Hochschild is the Monsignor Robert R. Kline 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’s been elected to serve as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.
- Aquinas on the Final Purpose of Human Existence and Human Prudence | Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.
Feb 8, 2021 • 47 min
This lecture was given to the University of Texas at Austin on November 19, 2020. For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the speaker: Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. is the Director of the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum. He did his doctoral studies at Oxford University and has research interests in metaphysics, Christology, Trinitarian theology, and the theology of grace. His books include The Incarnate Lord, A Thomistic Study in Christology (2015) and The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (2017). He is co-editor of the academic journal Nova et Vetera and in 2011 was appointed an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In 2019 Fr. White was named a McDonald Agape Foundation Distinguished Scholar.
- Flannery O'Connor and the Christian Intellectual Tradition
Feb 3, 2021 • 1h 2m
This talk was given at Texas A&M University on November 9, 2020. For more information on upcoming event, visit our website thomisticinstitute.org/ About the speaker: Ralph C. Wood has served as University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor since 1998. He holds the B.A. and M.A. from East Texas State College (now Texas A&M University-Commerce) as well as the A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. From 1971-1997 he taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he was the John Allen Easley Professor of Religion from 1990. At Baylor, he has a graduate appointment in Religion, though he teaches entirely in the Great Texts program. He serves as an editorial board member for both the Flannery O’Connor Review and Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review. He has also taught at Providence College in Rhode Island, at Samford University in Birmingham, and at Regent College in Vancouver.
- Christianity and Nationalism | Fr. Conor McDonough, O.P.
Feb 1, 2021 • 42 min
This lecture was given to Trinity College Dublin on December 16, 2020. The handout is available here: tinyurl.com/y689bga8 For more information on upcoming events, visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Fr. Conor McDonough, O.P. is a Dominican friar from Galway. He studied science and theology at the University of Cambridge and taught theology at secondary school before joining the Dominicans in 2009. He was ordained priest in 2016 and undertook further studies in theology at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), focussing on the writings of St Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. He is currently based in Dublin where he teaches theology to the students at the Dominican House of Studies in Dublin.
- Prayer, Study, and the Mind's Ascent to God | Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.
Jan 29, 2021 • 43 min
This lecture was given at Texas A&M University on October 15, 2020. For more information on upcoming event, visit our website thomisticinstitute.org/ About the speaker: Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., is the Director of the Thomistic Institute and Assistant Professor in Dogmatic Theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.L. from the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2001, after having practiced constitutional law for several years as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has also taught at The Catholic University of America Law School and at Providence College. He is the author of The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2016).
- Does Nature Make Laws? An Introduction to the Natural Law Tradition (duplicate?)
Jan 28, 2021 • 48 min
This lecture was delivered at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on November 02, 2020. For more information on upcoming events, visit us online: thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Joshua Hochschild is the Monsignor Robert R. Kline 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’s been elected to serve as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.
- The Fifth Way
Jan 22, 2021 • 53 min
This lecture was given on December 6, 2020 as part of "The Five Ways: A Symposium on Aquinas’s Proofs for the Existence of God" at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, AL. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org Speaker Bio: Brian T. Carl earned his M.A. in Philosophy from Saint Louis University and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America. He is an assistant professor at the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. His research focuses on Thomistic metaphysics, philosophical theology, cognitive theory, and moral psychology.
- Fr. Ambrose Mary Little, O.P.
Jan 20, 2021 • 57 min
This lecture was given on December 5, 2020 as part of "The Five Ways: A Symposium on Aquinas’s Proofs for the Existence of God" at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, AL. The hand out for this talk can be found here tinyurl.com/y7vdmng8 For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org Speaker Bio: Fr. Ambrose Mary Little O.P. was ordained to the priesthood in 2013 and is a member of the Dominican Order in the Province of St. Joseph. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Virginia.
- The Third Way
Jan 18, 2021 • 38 min
This lecture was given on December 5, 2020 as part of "The Five Ways: A Symposium on Aquinas’s Proofs for the Existence of God" at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, AL. The hand out for this talk can be found here tinyurl.com/y7lr4uzd For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org Speaker Bio: Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. (Ph.D., Duke 2001), is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, and a member of the Center for Thomistic Studies, University of St. Thomas (Houston). He has written many articles on medieval and late-scholastic philosophy and other topics, and is the author of Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (2005), Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and WIlliam of Ockham (2014), and Aquinas's Ethics (2020).
- The Novelty of Transubstantiation: The Presence of Christ in the Eucharist | Fr. James Brent, O.P. (duplicate?)
Jan 13, 2021 • 1h 4m
This lecture was delivered to the William & Mary chapter on October 5, 2020. Fr. Brent's lecture concludes around 35:05. The rest of the recording is a Q&A session with students from the William & Mary Thomistic Institute chapter. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: www.thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Fr. James Dominic Brent, O.P. was born and raised in Michigan. He pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies in Philosophy, and completed his doctorate in Philosophy at Saint Louis University on the epistemic status of Christian beliefs according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. He has articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Natural Theology, in the Oxford Handbook of Thomas Aquinas on “God’s Knowledge and Will,” and an article forthcoming on “Thomas Aquinas” in the Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology. He earned his STL from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, and was ordained a priest in the same year. He taught in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America from 2010- 2014, and spent the year of 2014-2015 doing full time itinerant preaching on college campuses across the United States.
- Christian Imagination of Flannery O’Connor and J. R. R. Tolkien
Jan 12, 2021 • 1h 4m
This lecture was given on October 29, 2020 at Baylor University. For more information on other upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Professor Raymond Hain is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Providence College and Associate Director of the Providence College Humanities Program. He received his BA in Philosophy from Christendom College and his MA and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied under Ralph McInerny and David Solomon. He works primarily in moral philosophy in the Thomistic tradition, as well as topics in applied ethics (especially bioethics and the ethics of architecture) and connections between philosophy and literature. As part of the Humanities Program, he directs the Providence College Humanities Forum and the Providence College Humanities Reading Seminars.
- The Last Plague: Thinking about God and Justice in the Old Testament | Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.
Jan 9, 2021 • 1h 3m
This talk was given to the Texas A&M Chapter on October 7, 2020. For more events and info, visit thomisticinstitute.org/events-1. About the Speaker: Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. is the Director of the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum. He did his doctoral studies at Oxford University, and has research interests in metaphysics, Christology, Trinitarian theology, and the theology of grace. His books include The Incarnate Lord, A Thomistic Study in Christology (2015) and The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (2017). He is co-editor of the academic journal Nova et Vetera and in 2011 was appointed an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In 2019 Fr. White was named a McDonald Agape Foundation Distinguished Scholar.
- Finding Hope in the Time Of COVID: C.S. Lewis and Thomas Aquinas
Jan 7, 2021 • 48 min
This lecture was given at Saint Louis University on November 11, 2020. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org. About the Speaker: Michael Dauphinais, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Theology Department at Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida. Professor Dauphinais holds a B.S.E. from Duke University, an M.T.S. from Duke Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. He has co-authored Knowing the Love of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and Holy People, Holy Land: A Theological Introduction to the Bible. He has co-edited multiple volumes as well as numerous articles and chapters in books dedicated to theology and exegesis in Aquinas and other topics relating to Catholic theology. Professor Dauphinais previously served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty. His favorite courses are C.S. Lewis, Triune God, and the Colloquium on Ancients and Moderns. He also enjoys riding horses and running.
- Chesterton on Saints Francis and Thomas Aquinas
Jan 5, 2021 • 1h 8m
This lecture was given at the University of Virginia on November 18, 2020. Dr. Hibbs' lecture concludes at 43:22. The rest of the recording is Q&A with him and the students of the chapter. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org. Speaker Bio: Thomas Hibbs has been President of the University of Dallas since 2019. Previously, he served as distinguished Professor of Ethics & Culture and Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University. He is the author of books including Virtue's Splendor: Wisdom, Prudence, and the Human Good and Shows About Nothing, one of two books of his about film. He has nearly completed a book on Pascal, tentatively entitled Divine Irony and is at work on a book on Nihilism, Beauty, and God, an application of Jacques Maritain’s aesthetic theory to the arts of poetry and painting in the 20th century. He also has written on film, culture, books and higher education in publications including Books and Culture, Christianity Today, First Things, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- The Incarnate, Sacramental, and Redeeming Christ at Christmas | Fr. Albert Trudel, O.P.
Dec 31, 2020 • 44 min
This talk was given as part of the Thomistic Institute's Advent livestream series. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Fr. Trudel received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2000, and after receiving the post-doctoral License in Mediaeval Studies in 2002, he served as a Junior Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies until 2006. He has taught courses in English Literature at the University of Toronto, Providence College, and Aquinas College (Nashville, TN). His academic interests are in editing medieval Latin and vernacular texts. He joined the Faculty in the spring semester of 2014.