Prof. James Nolan argues that Nagasaki’s prayerful response to the atomic bomb can only be understood through the city’s long Christian history, especially the witness of the hidden Christians and Takashi Nagai. This lecture ...
Fr. Brad Elliott argues that it is really a theological vision of the human person as a social being ordered to God through family, polity, and Church, showing how the common good, friendship, and the distinct missions of the...
This lecture was given on January 23rd, 2026, at University of Toronto.To make a gift this June, visit https://truth.thomisticinstitute.org/pod.About the Speaker:Sarah Byers is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. Her interests incl...
Dr. Brian FitzGerald explores how the first universities emerged from cathedral schools and monastic learning, and why they were built not just to transmit information, but to cultivate wisdom, practical judgment, and a love ...
Prof. Raymond Hain argues that Tocqueville’s insights show democratic citizenship depends on stable attachments, shared social life across class lines, and a willingness to let citizens practice freedom through responsibility...
Prof. James Felak shows how John Paul II used the saints in his pilgrimages to communist Poland to challenge atheistic rule, strengthen Catholic identity, and encourage resistance and hope. This lecture was given on October 3...
Sr. Anna Wray argues that many people are caught in a “musical dependence” that uses music to make ordinary life merely tolerable, a mere toleration which can transformed into true enjoyment by means of asceticism and an educ...
Fr. Ephrem Reese argues that silence is not mere absence but a fertile, hidden potency through which contemplation, devotion, and the word of God can come to life. This lecture was given on November 8th, 2025, at Dominican Ho...
Fr. Ephrem Reese argues that boredom can be read both as a modern opening onto time and wonder and, more importantly, as a spiritual problem that must be disciplined by the virtues. This lecture was given on November 7th, 202...
Dr. Jan Bentz argues that utopias are dangerous because they promise a perfected society by denying human fallenness, replacing Christian hope and grace with man-made salvation, and turning politics into a counterfeit religio...
Professor James Felak argues that Catholic social teaching presents a holistic vision of the human person and society, insisting that rights and duties belong together, the market must serve the common good, and neither socia...
Joe Grabowski presents Chesterton’s philosophy as a disciplined recovery of wonder, arguing that reality is not exhausted by habit, utility, or material explanation but should be seen with childlike astonishment and gratitude...
Fr. Jordan Schmidt says that vocation is a grace-filled cooperation with God’s kingdom, where renewed discernment helps us choose our way of life and embrace suffering with Christ for the salvation of ourselves and others. Th...
Fr. Gregory Pine teaches that discernment is less about forcing certainty and more about entering the way Christ reveals himself: gradually, trustingly, and through prayerful relationship. This lecture was given on March 28th...
This lecture was given on March 28th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events . About the Speakers: Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P., is an instru...
Sr. Mary Madeline Todd argues that Christ calls us not merely to survive but to thrive, and that “life to the full” comes through meaning, suffering united to love, disciplined commitment, wonder, prayer, and sacramental life...
Prof. Alexander Pruss argues that science is powerful but limited, because it depends on presuppositions about logic, rationality, uniformity of nature, and value judgments that science itself cannot justify, and because huma...
Prof. Gaven Kerr argues that Aquinas is central to Catholic theology because Thomas provides the systematic, deductive, and scripturally grounded framework needed to articulate doctrine about God, Trinity, and salvation. This...
Prof. Paul Scherz argues that AI-driven precision medicine and genetic risk prediction can undermine human dignity by turning health into an endless management of risk, increasing anxiety, weakening prudence, and subordinatin...
Prof. Raymond Hain presents John Henry Newman’s Idea of a University as a powerful defense of liberal education, arguing that a university should include theology because all knowledge forms one interconnected whole, yet also...
Prof. Christopher Malloy argues that Vatican II does not permit a hermeneutic of rupture but demands one of continuity and reform, as Benedict XVI taught, rejecting both progressive over-spiritualization and traditionalist re...
Fr. Brad Elliott traces the Church's evolving use of the soul-body metaphor for her relation to the state, purifying it in modern social teaching to affirm the Church as a distinct perfect society ordered to supernatural ends...
Prof. James Nolan argues that Tocqueville, Weber, and Chesterton offer contrasting foreign views on American secularism, with Tocqueville and Chesterton seeing religion as essential to democracy and predicting its persistence...
Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini argues that Oscar Wilde's aestheticism and life journey reveal a Catholic imagination, where art confronts suffering and beauty leads to embracing the full reality of pain, culminating in his final reco...