The Thomistic Institute

Dr. John-Paul Heil argues that Christians should “elect Christ as king” by judging political institutions according to whether they actually lead people toward holiness, the common good, and heaven.This lecture was given on February 17th, 2026, at Virginia Tech.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:John-Paul Heil is a Core Fellow in history, philosophy, Catholic anthropology, English, and theology at Mount St. Mary's University. He received his PhD in history from...

Dr. Lydia Dugdale argues that the “lost art of dying” can be recovered by reviving older practices of mortality awareness, community, reconciliation, and hope rather than accepting medicalized dying as normal.This lecture was given on February 16th, 2026, at University of Galway.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Dr. Lydia Dugdale is the Silberberg Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University in New...

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau presents the Catholic disagreement over honoring Truman as a serious moral dispute rooted in differing judgments about just war, innocent life, and the necessity of the atomic bomb.This lecture was given on February 14th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:A native of Louisiana, Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P., entered the Dominican Province of St. Joseph in 2005. After several years of...

Prof. Michael Krom argues that just war principles still govern contemporary warfare, especially drone warfare and autonomous weapons, and that moral judgment cannot be replaced by technology or legal convenience.This lecture was given on February 14th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Michael Krom started reading Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae shortly after his conversion at the end of college. Upon learning about Flannery O’Conn...

Prof. Michael Krom argues that just war theory remains morally necessary today because war must be judged by justice, right intention, and the common good rather than by realpolitik, legal minimalism, or national self-interest.This lecture was given on February 14th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Michael Krom started reading Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae shortly after his conversion at the end of college. Upon le...

Prof. Thomas Ward argues that Stoicism offers valuable detachment and moral discipline, but Boethius and Christianity deepen it by reordering the human person toward friendship, hope, and beatitude in God.This lecture was given on February 12th, 2026, at Franciscan University of Steubenville.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Thomas M. Ward is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin, in the School of Civic Leadership. He...

This lecture was given on February 12th, 2026, at Vanderbilt University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Dr. Lydia Dugdale is the Silberberg Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University in New York City. As a medical doctor and ethicist, she cares for patients, consults on complex ethical issues in the hospital, and teaches medical trainees and undergraduate students. Her scholarly work focuses on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia...

This lecture was given on March 5th, 2026, at University of Louisiana at Lafayette.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Dr. Heereman was born and raised in Germany. Originally trained to become a lawyer and after completing her bar exam, she experienced a deep encounter with the Lord which led her to consecrate her life to the study and teaching of the Word of God. She subsequently attended the ICPE school of Evangelization in India, Banglore...

This lecture was given on March 12th, 2026, at University of Edinburgh.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Rik Van Nieuwenhove is Professor of Medieval Theology at Durham University, UK. He has published scholarly articles on medieval theology (especially Aquinas) and spirituality, theology of the Trinity, and soteriology. His books include: Providence, Evil and Salvation. A Thomist Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026); Thomas Aquinas on Contemplation (Oxford: OUP, 2021); Introduction to Medieval Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2...

Prof. Christopher Frey argues that Stoicism offers real insights about freedom and detachment from externals, but its ideal of self-sufficient serenity risks flattening human emotion, moral life, and the need for grace.This lecture was given on November 7th, 2024, at United States Military Academy.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Christopher Frey is currently the McFarlin Professor of Philosophy at The University of Tulsa. Prof. Frey works primarily in Ancient...

Sr. Anna Wray argues that sorrow can either deform the soul as acedia or save it when rightly faced, and she offers a Thomistic account of how sorrow, friendship with God, and spiritual remedies shape the Christian life.This lecture was given on November 6th, 2025, at Iowa State University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Sister Anna Wray is a native of Connecticut and a member of the Dominican Sisters...

This lecture was given on February 19th, 2026, at University of Tulsa.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Fr. Stephen Ryan was born and raised in Boston and entered the Order of Preachers in 1987. He was ordained a priest in 1993 and, on completion of doctoral studies in Scripture, was assigned to the Dominican House of Studies in 2000. He teaches Scripture and the biblical languages.

Prof. Michael Dauphinais contends that modern Christians, formed by empiricism, individualism, and a this‑worldly hope that easily turns to despair, especially need the Eucharist because it is the concrete, sacramental way Christ draws us into the Trinitarian communion for which we were created, making his paschal mystery present and reproducing his own filial relation to the Father in us.This lecture was given on November 14th, 2025, at University of Oklahoma.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About th...

Prof. Gavin D’Costa explains how, since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has rethought its relationship to Judaism by affirming the enduring validity of God’s covenant with the Jewish people, recovering the Church’s identity as a fundamentally Jewish–Gentile reality, and opening unresolved but fertile questions about mission, ecclesiology, and antisemitism.This lecture was given on October 9th, 2025, at University of Edinburgh.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Gavin D’...

Prof. Michael Root argues that, in Catholic theology, we are saved wholly by the unmerited grace of Christ, and that this grace brings us into a Spirit‑given life of faith, hope, love, and morally significant works, so that eternal life is at once pure gift and, in a secondary sense, a “merited destiny.”This lecture was given on September 9th, 2025, at North Carolina State University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:M...

Fr. Dominic Langevin defends the Catholic priesthood as a divinely willed, sacramental system of mediation in which ordained men, configured to Christ the High Priest, bestow God’s gifts on the faithful and offer their prayers and sins to God, thereby promoting both God’s glory and the sanctification and dignity of the Church.This lecture was given on November 10th, 2025, at West Virginia University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Fr...

Fr. John Baptist Ku unpacks St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of predestination, showing how God’s universal salvific will, efficacious grace, and real human freedom coexist without collapsing into Calvinist double predestination or Pelagian self-salvation.This lecture was given on November 22nd, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Fr. John Baptist Ku was born in Manhattan (1965) and grew up in Fairfax, Virginia. After graduating from Scho...

Prof. Thomas Osborne clarifies how, for Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, the distinctive immateriality of human intellectual knowledge grounds a philosophical case for the soul’s immortality, going beyond today’s narrower “problem of consciousness.”This lecture was given on October 16th, 2025, at University of Connecticut.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. (Ph.D, Duke University, 2001) is the Frank A. Rudman Endowed Chair in Philosophy and the Chai...

Prof. Marshall Bierson uses Aristotle’s distinction between work, play, and deeper “energetic” activities to argue that friendship and contemplation uniquely allow us to “rest” in what is truly good and meaningful, and then shows how Aquinas radicalizes this by making both contemplation and friendship with God the heart of human fulfillment.This lecture was given on November 20th, 2025, at Cornell University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Marshall Bierson is an assi...

Dr. Erik Dempsey explains how St. Thomas Aquinas sees pleasure as a natural and God-given part of the good life, one that both signals our true human ends and yet must be disciplined by temperance in a fallen world.This lecture was given on December 4th, 2025, at Southern Methodist University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Professor Erik Dempsey an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Departments of Government, Classics...