The Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute
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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.

  1. How to Avoid Being Unhappy: Gluttony and the Proper Place of Food and Alcohol in the Good Life – Prof. W. Scott Cleveland

    4 HR AGO

    How to Avoid Being Unhappy: Gluttony and the Proper Place of Food and Alcohol in the Good Life – Prof. W. Scott Cleveland

    Prof. W. Scott Cleveland explains how food and alcohol can either undermine or promote true happiness, arguing that gluttony is a disordered desire for the pleasures of eating and drinking that disrupts health, friendship, and virtuous living rather than their proper role in a flourishing, festal life. This lecture was given on November 13th, 2025, at University of Alabama. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events. About the Speakers: Professor Scott Cleveland received his PhD in philosophy (Baylor University) and is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Catholic Studies at the University of Mary (Bismarck, ND). His research interests are in ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of religion. He is especially interested in the study of virtues and emotions, the relation between the two, and the role of each in the moral and intellectual life. His thought is deeply influenced by Aristotle and Aquinas and his work has appeared in journals such as American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Res Philosophica, Religious Studies, Religions, and the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He is the co-editor with Adam Pelser of Faith and Virtue Formation: Essays in Aid of Becoming Good with Oxford University Press. Keywords: Alcohol And Sobriety, Aquinas On Gluttony, Aristotelian Eudaimonia, Ethics Of Eating, Feasting And Festivity, Food And Friendship, Gluttony And Virtue, Vices Of Eating And Drinking

    51 min
  2. The Terrible Covenant of Sloth: Boredom and the Resistance of Joy – Dr. R.J. Snell

    1 DAY AGO

    The Terrible Covenant of Sloth: Boredom and the Resistance of Joy – Dr. R.J. Snell

    Dr. R.J. Snell argues that the real epidemic behind student anxiety, boredom, and frenzied achievement is not laziness but sloth—a refusal of responsibility and a sadness at the divine good—that resists joy, commitment, and genuine happiness. This lecture was given on December 1st, 2025, at New York University. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events. About the Speakers: R. J. Snell is Editor-in-Chief of Public Discourse and Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ. He has been a visiting instructor at Princeton University, where he is also executive director of the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Life. He's written books and articles on Natural Law, Education, Bernard Lonergan, Boredom, Subjectivity, and Sexual Ethics for a variety of publications. Keywords: Acedia And Sloth, Aquinas On Joy, Boredom And Busyness, Contemporary Student Anxiety, Contemplation And Leisure, Judge Holden in Blood Meridian, Sloth As Sadness At The Good, Thomistic Spiritual Theology, True Festivity And Eucharist

    40 min
  3. Money, Pleasure, Influence and the Key to a Happy Life – Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

    2 DAYS AGO

    Money, Pleasure, Influence and the Key to a Happy Life – Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

    Fr. Gregory Pine shows how money, pleasure, and influence all fail as ultimate goals and argues that true happiness comes from living in accord with our nature as creatures made for communion with God through the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. This lecture was given on November 19th, 2025, at University of South Florida. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events. About the Speakers: Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P., is an instructor of dogmatic and moral theology at the Dominican House of Studies and the Assistant Director of the Thomistic Institute. He holds a doctorate from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He is the author of Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly and Your Eucharistic Identity: A Sacramental Guide to the Fullness of Life, and is co-author of Credo: An RCIA Program and Marian Consecration with Aquinas.  His writing also appears in Aleteia, Magnificat, and Ascension’s Catholic Classics series. In addition to the TI podcast, he regularly contributes to the podcasts Godsplaining and Pints with Aquinas, and Catholic Classics. Keywords: Charity And Happiness, Faith Hope And Charity, Fulfillment, Happiness, Human Nature, Natural Law And Teleology, Money Pleasure And Influence, Theological Virtues, True Happiness In God, University Student Life

    38 min
  4. Do We Really Have a Bill of Rights? – Prof. Jerome Foss

    3 DAYS AGO

    Do We Really Have a Bill of Rights? – Prof. Jerome Foss

    Prof. Jerome Foss argues that what Americans call the “Bill of Rights” is not a true bill of rights but a set of constitutional amendments best understood within a Federalist—and broadly Thomistic—vision of law, liberty, and the common good that resists reducing politics to individual rights talk. This lecture was given on November 4th, 2025, at Washington & Lee University. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events. About the Speakers: Jerome C. Foss is Professor of Politics, Endowed Director of the Center for Catholic Thought and Culture, and Director of the SVC Core Curriculum at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Foss earned his BA from the University of Dallas and his MA and PhD from Baylor University. His research focuses on Catholic political thought, American political thought, and literature and political philosophy. His most recent book, Flannery O'Connor and the Perils of Governing by Tenderness, brings these interests together. He has also published on the history of political philosophy, the U.S. Constitution, Constitutional Law, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln. He is currently working on a scholarly book on the first ten amendments to the Constitution (commonly known as the Bill of Rights) and a book for a more general Catholic audience on the Declaration of Independence. Foss enjoys teaching a variety of courses, including courses on the Constitutional Convention and Shakespeare as a political thinker. As Director of the CCTC, Foss helps administer the college's Benedictine Leadership Studies Program, has developed and led the colleges summer program in Rome, founded and edits an academic journal entitled Conversatio, and organizes conferences, seminars, and other events. Keywords: American Constitutionalism, Anti Federalists And Rights, Bill Of Rights, Federalist Political Theory, James Madison, Natural Law And Natural Rights, Republican Government Thomistic Political Thought, United States Constitution

    53 min
  5. John Henry Newman's Critique of Liberalism: Lessons from the Aristotelian Tradition – Prof. Joshua Hochschild

    6 DAYS AGO

    John Henry Newman's Critique of Liberalism: Lessons from the Aristotelian Tradition – Prof. Joshua Hochschild

    This lecture was given on October 9th, 2025, at University of Michigan. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events. About the Speakers: Joshua Hochschild is 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 served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. Keywords: Aristotelian Epistemology, Conscience And First Principles, Development Of Doctrine, Intellectual Virtue And Noûs, John Henry Newman, Liberalism In Religion, Newman’s Grammar Of Assent, Newman’s Idea Of A University, Reason Faith And Dogma

    49 min
  6. The Types of Miracles and the Possibilty of Demonic Miracles – Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

    11 FEB

    The Types of Miracles and the Possibilty of Demonic Miracles – Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P.

    Fr. Anselm Ramelow explains how, in a Thomistic framework, miracles are graded by how they surpass nature and why only God can perform the highest-level miracles of creation and resurrection, while finite spirits—including demons—can produce lesser “signs” that must be carefully discerned. This lecture was given on April 5th, 2025, at St. Albert's Priory. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events. About the Speakers: Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P., a native of Germany, teaches philosophy at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, where he is also currently the chair of the philosophy department. He is also a member of the Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and the Academy of Catholic Theology. He obtained his doctorate under Robert Spaemann in Munich on Leibniz and the Spanish Jesuits (Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997) and did theological work on George Lindbeck and the question of a Thomist philosophy and theology of language (Beyond Modernism? - George Lindbeck and the Linguistic Turn in Theology, Neuried: Ars Una 2005). Other works include Thomas Aquinas: De veritate Q. 21-24; Translation and Commentary (Hamburg: Meiner, 2013) and God: Reason and Reality (Basic Philosophical Concepts) (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 2014), as editor and contributor. Articles appeared in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Nova et Vetera, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly and Angelicum. Areas of research and teaching include Free Will, the History of Philosophy and Philosophical Aesthetics. He has worked on a philosophical approach to Miracles and other topics of the philosophy of religion, and more recently the philosophy of technology. Keywords: Aquinas On Miracles, Demonic Signs And Wonders, Discernment Of Spirits, Finite Spiritual Causes, Levels Of Miracles, Natural Law And Suspension, Omnipotence And Creation, Possibility Of Demonic Miracles, Thomistic Philosophy Of Miracles

    50 min
  7. Fire on the Altar: A Lecture on St. Augustine – Prof. Chad Pecknold

    10 FEB

    Fire on the Altar: A Lecture on St. Augustine – Prof. Chad Pecknold

    Prof. Chad Pecknold shows how St. Augustine’s Confessions should be read as a Catholic, sacramental account of conversion in which the “altar of the heart” is turned toward God and united to Christ’s Eucharistic sacrifice, rather than as a merely emotional, garden-conversion memoir. This lecture was given on October 7th, 2025, at Vanderbilt University. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events. About the Speakers: Dr. Chad C. Pecknold earned his PhD in Systematic Theology at the University of Cambridge in England. He is a Catholic theologian and for the last 16 years he has been a professor of theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington DC, teaching in the areas of fundamental theology, Christian anthropology and political theology. Since 2022, he has been named by The Catholic Herald as one of the most influential Catholic thought leaders and authors in the United States. An internationally recognized scholar of Augustine’s theological and political thought, Pecknold has authored or edited five books — including Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History and The T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology —and authored dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles. He edits the Sacra Doctrina series for CUA Press with Fr. Thomas Joseph White O.P. He has served the public by educating thousands of students at the Institute of Catholic Culture, and also through his many columns at First Things, National Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and The Catholic Herald. He has been an invited guest on NPR's "All Things Considered," Fox News, ABC News, and has been a frequent guest on EWTN News Nightly, World Over Live with Raymond Arroyo, and various other EWTN programs, such as the celebrated series on Heresies. Pecknold has also led institutions, serving as Chair of the American Academy of Catholic Theology from 2015-2020, expanding and professionalizing a guild of theologians faithful to the Magisterium. He also serves in non-profit board leadership as Board Director for Americans United for Life, Board Member for Pro-Life Partners, Board Member for the Classical Learning Test, Fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology, and as Resident Theologian at the Institute for Faith and Public Culture at the Basilica of Saint Mary — the oldest Catholic Church in the Commonwealth of Virginia. While currently finishing a short book on the Catholic understanding of Augustine’s Confessions, Pecknold continues to work on a long term project on Augustine’s City of God and the Christian order of things. He and his wife Dr. Sara Pecknold (who teaches Music History at Christendom College) have five children, including adorably identical twin toddler girls whose names they frequently confuse! Keywords: Altar Of The Heart, Augustine’s Confessions, Bad And Good Sacrifice, Eucharistic Conversion, Fire On The Altar, Platonic Ascent And Christ, Prof. Chad Pecknold, Restless Heart And Worship, St. Augustine And Monica, Sacramental Reading Of Augustine

    54 min
  8. Dominican Mystics of the Rhineland – Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.

    9 FEB

    Dominican Mystics of the Rhineland – Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.

    Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy introduces the medieval Dominican mystics of the Rhineland and, in dialogue with Aquinas and Pseudo-Dionysius, shows how their often strikingly apophatic language about abyss, detachment, and “ground” can be critically integrated into a Trinitarian, Eucharistic vision of Christian mystical union. This lecture was given on May 3rd, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events. Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P. is a Coordinator for Campus Outreach at the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC. He has served as a parochial vicar at St. Pius V Church in Providence, RI, as well as an adjunct professor and assistant chaplain at Providence College. He originates from Columbus, OH, studied architecture in Virginia and Switzerland, and practiced in the DC area before entering the Order of Preachers in 2013. He was ordained a priest in 2020 at the Dominican House of Studies during the quarantine. In his work with the Thomistic Institute, he has given talks on the virtue of penance, loving God with the mind, and the intersection of theology and architecture. He often travels the country visiting Thomistic Institute Campus Chapters, leading seminars that help students grasp Thomistic concepts. Additionally, he coordinates the TI's intellectual retreat programming, which affords students time to pray and integrate into their lives Thomistic theology and philosophy. Keywords: Apophatic Theology, Dominican Mysticism, Eucharistic Devotion, Meister Eckhart, Mystical Union With God, Pseudo-Dionysius, Rhineland Dominican Mystics, Thomas Aquinas, Trinity And The Soul

    55 min
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About

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.

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  • Creator
    The Thomistic Institute
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2026
  • Episodes
    1.9K
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved 183125
  • Show Website
    The Thomistic Institute

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