

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

May 31, 2022 • 58min
Who Am I? Becoming Someone in the Desert | Fr. Gabriel O'Donnell, O.P.
This lecture was given on April, 2 2022 at St. Albert the Great Priory as part of the intellectual retreat "To Be Human in the Presence of God: St. Thomas Aquinas and Desert Spirituality."
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Fr. O’Donnell grew up in Syracuse, New York. After two years as a student at Providence College he entered the Order of Preachers in 1963 and was ordained a priest in 1970. In 1971 he earned an MA in Liturgical Studies from the University of Notre Dame and in 1980 earned an STD degree in the area of Liturgical Spiritual Theology from the Pontifical Faculty for Spirituality, the Teresianum, in Rome. He has previously taught at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, St. Charles Seminary in Philadelphia, PA and the Angelicum in Rome. In addition to teaching he currently serves as a vice-postulator for the cause for sainthood of Father Michael J. McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus and as vice-postulator for the cause of Rose Hawthorne, founder of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, NY. He previously survived as postulator for the cause of canonization of Father Paul of Graymoor, which has also been submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome. With Robin Mass, Ph.D., Fr. O’Donnell is the author of Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church and has contributed to A Love That Never Ends: A Key to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

May 30, 2022 • 1h 4min
Who Are the Monks? | Sr. Maria Kiely, OSB
This lecture was given on April 1, 2022 at St. Albert the Great Priory as part of the intellectual retreat "To Be Human in the Presence of God: St. Thomas Aquinas and Desert Spirituality."
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Sr. Maria M. Kiely, O.S.B. is a Benedictine of the Congregation of Solesmes. She specializes in Christian thought and Scriptural exegesis in the early Church and in the rise and development of monasticism. She has studied in depth the life and writings of Ambrose of Milan and his use and adaptation of Origen and Plotinus. Her current research focuses on the development of the tradition of hymnody in the early Church through the Middle Ages. She is currently participating in a major commentary on the hymns of the Liturgy of the Hours. In addition to her work at Catholic University, she teaches Greek and Latin at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, Dominican House of Studies. She is also on the Editorial Committee for the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

May 29, 2022 • 55min
'We Shall See Him as He Is’: Eternal Life and Beatitude | Prof. Bruce Marshall
This lecture was given on February 27, 2022 at Cedarbrake Renewal Center as part of the Second Annual Texas Student Retreat: "The Meaning of Death and Eternal Life."
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Bruce D. Marshall is Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine at Southern Methodist University. His teaching specialties are Medieval and Reformation theology and systematic theology. His research interests include Doctrine of the Trinity, Christology, philosophical issues in theology, sacramental theology, and Judaism and Christian theology. He is the author of Trinity and Truth (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

May 27, 2022 • 1h
St. Thomas Aquinas and Josef Pieper on Creation | Fr. Jonah Teller, O.P.
This lecture was given on March 16, 2022 at Duke University.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Fr. Jonah Teller, O.P., is a friar of the Dominican Province of Saint Joseph. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Dallas in 2011, entered the Order of Preachers in 2013, and was ordained a priest in May of 2020. He holds a licentiate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.

May 26, 2022 • 49min
The History of Miracles: A History of the Impossible? | Prof. Carlos Eire
This lecture was given on March 14, 2022 at Yale University.
The handout for this lecture can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/u74wk4hb.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Carlos Eire, who received his PhD from Yale in 1979, specializes in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; and the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for two years. He is the author of War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin (1986); From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain (1995); A Very Brief History of Eternity (2010); Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016); and The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (2019). And he is co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: An Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (1997). He has also ventured into the twentieth century and the Cuban Revolution in the memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), which won the National Book Award in Nonfiction in the United States and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami (2010), explores the exile experience. A past president of the Society for Reformation Research, he is currently researching attitudes toward miracles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His recent book Reformations won the R.R.Hawkins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the American Publishers Association, as well as the award for Best Book in the Humanities. It was also awarded the Jaroslav Pelikan Prize by Yale University Press. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state – a distinction he regards as the highest of all honors.

May 24, 2022 • 56min
The Role of Poetry in the Christian Life | Dr. Patrick Callahan
This lecture was given on April 5, 2022 at Cairn University.
The handout for this lecture can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/2p8psrnj.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Patrick Callahan is director of the Newman Institute for Catholic Thought & Culture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as well as Assistant Professor of English & Humanities at St. Gregory the Great Seminary. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Dallas and his graduate work at Fordham University in Classical Philology. While his doctoral work focused on ancient Greek commentaries to the lyric poet Pindar, his recent work focuses on early Jesuit Latin texts.

May 23, 2022 • 54min
The Dignity of Conscience | Fr. Alan O'Sullivan, O.P.
This lecture was given on April 6, 2022 at Trinity College Dublin.
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Fr. Alan O’Sullivan OP is an Irish Dominican. Ordained a priest in 2000 he studied at Blackfriars House of Studies, Oxford, where he obtained a Lectorate in Sacred Theology. His area of research focussed on “New Movements and Communities, Vatican II, and the Ecclesiology of Communion.” Having worked as a curate in a parish in Dublin for two years he went to study at the Angelicum, Rome, where he obtained a Licence in Sacred Theology. In 2012 he obtained his doctorate from Fribourg University, Switzerland. He specialises in moral theology, and lectures at the Dominican House of Studies, Dublin. He is currently Chaplain to Trinity College Dublin and Spiritual Director to Pure in Heart, Ireland. His book Self-Giving, Self-Mastery was published by Peter Lang in 2017.

May 20, 2022 • 48min
Lead Us Not Into Temptation | Fr. Basil Cole, O.P.
This lecture was given on March 26, 2022 at the Dominican House of Studies as part of the Thomistic Institute's Annual Spring Thomistic Circles Conference: "Our Father: Prayer and Theology."
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Joining the Dominicans of the Western Province in 1960, Fr. Cole was ordained to the priesthood in 1966. He finished his theological studies at Le Saulchoir in Etiolles, France earning the lectorate and licentiate degrees in 1968. He later received the doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome (the Angelicum). After teaching theology and philosophy at Pilarica College for the Notre Dame Sisters (1968-69), Fr. Cole was elected prior of St. Dominic’s in San Francisco, where he also served as parish priest, a member of the provincial council and lecturer at various institutions (1970-1975). Elected prior of Daniel Murphy High School community in Los Angeles he became a member of the Western Dominican preaching band and preached throughout the American West. Fr. Cole was an invited professor at the Angelicum from 1985-97, and has taught moral, spiritual and dogmatic theology at the Dominican House of Studies since 1997.
Fr. Cole has authored: Music and Morals, Alba House, Staten Island, New York, 1993; co-authored with Paul Connor, O.P.; Christian Totality: Theology of Consecrated Life, published by St. Paul’s editions in Bombay, India 1990, revised in 1997 Alba House, Staten Island, New York. He has written for The Priest, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Faith and Reason, and Angelicum. He has also been a long time collaborator for Germain Grisez’s four volume series of moral theology, The Way of the Lord Jesus.

May 19, 2022 • 1h 2min
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread | Fr. John Gavin, S.J.
This lecture was given on March 26, 2022 at the Dominican House of Studies as part of the Thomistic Institute's Annual Spring Thomistic Circles Conference: "Our Father: Prayer and Theology."
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Father Gavin earned his B.A. from Boston College, his M.A. from Fordham University, and his M.Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkley. He received his Sacred Theology Doctorate in Rome and was a lecturer at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Gregorian University for three years. Fr. Gavin entered the Society of Jesus in 1991 and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 2002. He is the author of 'They are like the angels in the heavens': Angelology and Anthropology in the Thought of Maximus the Confessor (Augustinianum, 2009) and A Celtic Christology: The Incarnation According to John Scottus Eriugena (Cascade, 2014).

May 18, 2022 • 1h 5min
Thy Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven | Fr. Oliver Keenan, O.P.
This lecture was given on March 26, 2022 at the Dominican House of Studies as part of the Thomistic Institute's Annual Spring Thomistic Circles Conference: "Our Father: Prayer and Theology."
For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org.
About the speaker:
Fr Oliver is the Director of the Aquinas Institute and a member of the Theology Faculty at the University of Oxford.
As Fellow and Lector, Fr Oliver teaches Systematic Theology at Blackfriars. As Director of the Aquinas Institute, he has responsibility for coordinating its research programme and for organising its annual programme of reading classes, seminars, lectures and colloquia.
He completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford (under the supervision of Professor Graham Ward). His doctoral work outlined a semantic ontology for Christian dogmatics, in dialogue with the philosophy of Michael Polanyi. He specialises in theological ontology, theological epistemology, and twentieth-century dogmatics, particularly Catholic receptions of Karl Barth.
Together with Dr Daniel De Haan, he is leading a two-year Templeton-funded project on ‘Truth, Aquinas, and the Theological Turn in Continental Philosophy‘.
In addition to his work at Blackfriars, he is a Translation Fellow of the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary; an Associate Lecturer at the Maryvale Institute; Trustee of the Eckhart Society; a member of the Editorial Board of New Blackfriars; and the Master of Students for the English Dominicans.


