

The Thomistic Institute
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.
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.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Aug 8, 2022 • 1h 9min
Tolkien on the Nature and Purpose of Christian Art | Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini
View Prof. Pezzini's handout here: https://tinyurl.com/342z96ec
This lecture was given on April 21, 2022 at The Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst as part of "Catholicism and the Arts: An Intellectual Retreat."
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Prof. Pezzini returned to Oxford in 2021, after five beautiful years in St Andrews (2016–2021). He studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (2003–2008) and the University of Oxford (D.Phil. 2012). He held research fellowships at Magdalen College Oxford (2013–2015) and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2016). From 2010 to 2013 he worked as Assistant Editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Latin.

Aug 5, 2022 • 53min
The Transformative Power of Divine Beauty | Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, C.O.
This lecture was given on April 20, 2022 at The Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst as part of "Catholicism and the Arts: An Intellectual Retreat."
For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Uwe Michael Lang, a native of Nuremberg, Germany, is a priest of the Oratory of St Philip Neri in London, where he serves as Parish Priest. He holds a Mag.Theol. from the University of Vienna (Austria) an S.T.L. from the Catholic University Leuven (Belgium) and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. He teaches at Allen Hall Seminary in London, is an Associate Staff member at the Maryvale Institute, Birmingham, a Visiting Fellow at St Mary's University, Twickenham, and has been on the Visiting Faculty of the Liturgical Institute in Mundelein, Illinois. Formerly staff member of Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (2008–2012) and Consultor to the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff (2008–2013). He is a Board Member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy and the Editor of Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal.

Aug 4, 2022 • 57min
Dante's Beatrice and the Beauty of the Christian Faith | Dr. George Corbett
This lecture was given on April 20, 2022 at The Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst as part of "Catholicism and the Arts: An Intellectual Retreat."
For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Dr. George Corbett is a Senior Lecturer in Theology and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. Previously, he held positions as Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy, Trinity College, and affiliated lecturer in Italian, University of Cambridge, where he also taught English literature and theology. He received his BA (double first), MPhil (distinction), and PhD (AHRC-funded) from the University of Cambridge. He has also studied in Pisa (as an Erasmus-Socrates exchange scholar at La Scuola Normale Superiore), Rome (Institutum Pontificium Alterioris Latinitatis), and Montella (Vivarium Novum).
Dr. Corbett directs CEPHAS (a Thomistic Centre for Philosophy and Scholastic Theology), TheoArtistry (a project linking up theologians and artists), and is leading on a new collaborative MLitt in Sacred Music.

Aug 3, 2022 • 47min
Love, Friendship, and Heavenly Happiness | Prof. Christopher Kaczor
This lecture was given on April 19, 2022 at the University of Dallas.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Dr. Christopher Kaczor (rhymes with razor) is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and a member of the James Madison Society of Princeton University. In 2015, he was appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life of Vatican City, and he serves as a Consultor to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He 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. He is an award winning author of twelve books including 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, Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues; Life IssuesMedical 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.

Aug 2, 2022 • 1h 3min
Counsel & The Limits Of Reason | Prof. Adam Eitel
This lecture was given on July 8, 2022 at the 4th Annual Student Leadership Conference on Faith, Reason, and the Mind’s Ascent to God.
The handout for this lecture can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/bdct2y69.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Prof. Adam Eitel is an Assistant Professor of Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Dr. Eitel focuses his research and teaching on the history of Christian moral thought, contemporary social ethics and criticism, and modern religious thought. Dr. Eitel has roughly a dozen books, chapters, edited volumes, and articles published or in progress. These include an ethical analysis of drone strikes and a theological account of domination. His current book project explores the role of love in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas. A 2004 Baylor University graduate and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Fribourg, Dr. Eitel received his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, completing the latter in 2015.

Aug 1, 2022 • 1h 11min
Faith and Apologetics | Fr. John Corbett, OP
This lecture was given on July 8, 2022 at the 4th Annual Student Leadership Conference on Faith, Reason, and the Mind’s Ascent to God.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Fr. Corbett grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and came to know the Dominicans through family members in the Order, through St. Patrick’s Parish, and through attending Providence College, from which he graduated in 1973 with a B.A. in Political Science. Fr. Corbett joined the Dominicans in the summer of 1974 and was ordained a priest on May 12th, 1980. He completed his Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 1981 and began to teach moral theology as well as the Development of Western Civilization at Providence College. Three years later he began his doctoral studies under Servais Pinckaers, O.P., at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and was awarded his Ph.D. after completing his dissertation on the theology of virtue in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Fr. Corbett was appointed to the Faculty of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, in 1991, and spent the next seven years teaching various courses in moral theology, as well as offering retreats, spiritual direction, and personal formation for seminarians. Joining the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in the Fall of 1998, Fr. Corbett teaches in the area of fundamental moral theology and the theology of the virtues, covering material from the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae in four sequential courses. He also offers seminars in Thomistic Action Theory, Contemporary Interpretations of Natural Law, as well as a seminar in the thought of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre. He is interested in developing courses on the Ethics of Homicide, as well as on the Development of Casuistry in the Catholic Church.

Jul 29, 2022 • 1h 23min
Wisdom and the Reasons of Love | Prof. Adam Eitel
The podcast discusses St. Thomas Aquinas's account of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, particularly the gift of wisdom, and its necessity for living a life in pursuit of God, emphasizing that virtues alone are insufficient without these divine gifts.This lecture was given on July 8, 2022 at the 4th Annual Student Leadership Conference on Faith, Reason, and the Mind’s Ascent to God.For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.About the speaker:
Prof. Adam Eitel is an Assistant Professor of Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Dr. Eitel focuses his research and teaching on the history of Christian moral thought, contemporary social ethics and criticism, and modern religious thought. Dr. Eitel has roughly a dozen books, chapters, edited volumes, and articles published or in progress. These include an ethical analysis of drone strikes and a theological account of domination. His current book project explores the role of love in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas. A 2004 Baylor University graduate and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Fribourg, Dr. Eitel received his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, completing the latter in 2015.

Jul 29, 2022 • 50min
Off-Campus Conversations, Ep. 001: Prof. Jennifer Frey on Aquinas & the Cardinal Virtues
Join Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. for an off-campus conversation with Prof. Jenn Frey about her latest Thomistic Institute lecture, "What Makes a Person Good? Aquinas and the Cardinal Virtues."
Off-Campus Conversations with Fr. Gregory Pine, Ep. 001: Prof. Jenn Frey on Aquinas and the Cardinal Virtues
You can listen to the original lecture here: https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/what-makes-a-person-good-aquinas-and-the-cardinal-virtues-prof-jennifer-frey
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org
About the speaker:
Jennifer A. Frey (University of South Carolina) received her BA from Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana in 2000, and her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. In 2013 she was Collegiate Assistant Professor and Harper Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago prior to taking up her current appointment as Assistant Professor in the Philosophy department at the University of South Carolina. Jennifer's research interests lie at the intersection of virtue ethics and action theory. She has publications in The Journal of the History of Philosophy, The Journal of Analytic Philosophy, and in several edited volumes. She is the recipient of several grants, including coa 2.1 million dollar project awarded by the John Templeton Foundation, titled "Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning in Life." She is currently at work on three separate book projects.

Jul 27, 2022 • 1h 17min
What Makes a Person Good? Aquinas and the Cardinal Virtues | Prof. Jennifer Frey
This lecture was given on April 28, 2022 at the College of William and Mary.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Jennifer Frey is an associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. Prior to joining the philosophy faculty at USC, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. She has published widely on virtue and moral psychology and she has co-edited three volumes on Self-Transcendence and Virtue, Practical Wisdom, and Practical Truth. Her writing has been featured in Breaking Ground, Evangelization and Culture, First Things, Fare Forward, Image, Law and Liberty, The Point, and USA Today.

Jul 26, 2022 • 1h 12min
Faith And Asceticism | Fr. John Corbett, O.P.
This lecture was given on July 7, 2022 at the 4th Annual Student Leadership Conference on Faith, Reason, and the Mind’s Ascent to God.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Fr. Corbett grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and came to know the Dominicans through family members in the Order, through St. Patrick’s Parish, and through attending Providence College, from which he graduated in 1973 with a B.A. in Political Science. Fr. Corbett joined the Dominicans in the summer of 1974 and was ordained a priest on May 12th, 1980. He completed his Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 1981 and began to teach moral theology as well as the Development of Western Civilization at Providence College. Three years later he began his doctoral studies under Servais Pinckaers, O.P., at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and was awarded his Ph.D. after completing his dissertation on the theology of virtue in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Fr. Corbett was appointed to the Faculty of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, in 1991, and spent the next seven years teaching various courses in moral theology, as well as offering retreats, spiritual direction, and personal formation for seminarians. Joining the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in the Fall of 1998, Fr. Corbett teaches in the area of fundamental moral theology and the theology of the virtues, covering material from the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae in four sequential courses. He also offers seminars in Thomistic Action Theory, Contemporary Interpretations of Natural Law, as well as a seminar in the thought of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre. He is interested in developing courses on the Ethics of Homicide, as well as on the Development of Casuistry in the Catholic Church.


