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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.

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Yesterday · 52 min
An Introduction to Thomistic Philosophy of Nature - Prof. Ryan Miller
Prof. Ryan Miller offers an introductory overview of the foundational terminology of Thomistic philosophy of nature — potency and act, the four causes, per se versus per accidens, the categories of substance, accident, and relation, and nature vers...
Friday · 46 min
Art that reveals Nature: A Thomistic Account of Scientific Experiments and Instruments - Fr. Thomas Davenport, O.P.
Fr. Thomas Davenport argues against the Thomist intuition that artifice obscures nature, showing from Aquinas's account of art and artifacts that artificial forms are accidental forms rooted in the natural active and passive powers of substances, s...
Thursday · 47 min
The Mystery of Beauty - Dr. Sarah E. Maple
Dr. Sarah E. Maple asks how we acquire an organic vision of beauty that is not merely material or visual, arguing from Aquinas's formal criteria of beauty (proportion, integrity, clarity) and Hans Urs von Balthasar's theological aesthetics (form an...
Wednesday · 1 hr 5 min
The War on Beauty - Fr. Gabriel Torretta, O.P.
Fr. Gabriel Torretta argues that beauty has become a "forbidden word" for our age due to the effects of German Idealism and Modernism; as a remedy, he proposes a recovery grounded in the Christian metaphysical tradition (Eriugena, Aquinas, Augustin...
September 15 · 42 min
On the Via Pulchritudinis: Pope Benedict XVI’s Meditations on Art and Prayer - Fr. Alan O'Sullivan, O.P.
Fr. Alan O'Sullivan provides an introduction to Pope Benedict XVI's thought on the "via pulchritudinis" — the way of beauty — arguing that authentic beauty wounds the heart and draws it toward the transcendent Logos, is inseparable from truth, good...
September 14 · 51 min
Purifying the Imagination: Iconoclasm and the Incarnation - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy argues that the Exodus prohibition on graven images was a purification of Israel's imagination from false imaginings of the invisible God, and that the Incarnation opens a new, positive use of sacred images — the face of Christ...
September 11 · 1 hr 5 min
Iconoclastic and Incarnational Church Architecture - Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy, O.P.
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy argues that church architecture is "incarnational" when it corresponds to a true cosmological vision of reality ordered through and toward the Logos and embodies the principles revealed to Moses on Sinai, and "iconoclastic" whe...
September 10 · 42 min
Aquinas on Conscience as the Application of Knowledge to Practice - Fr. David Goodill, O.P.
Fr. David Goodill explains that, for Aquinas, conscience is not a power of the soul but an act of the intellect rooted in the natural habit of synderesis and formed by the virtues, above all prudence, so that it reflects the deepest interiority of ...
September 9 · 47 min
Aquinas on Conscience and the Inner Act of the Will - Fr. David Goodill, O.P.
Fr. David Goodill expounds Aquinas's treatment of conscience in Summa theologiae I-II, q.19, arguing that conscience is the inner act of the will and that, even when erring, it binds the agent, such that right formation of conscience through virtue...
September 8 · 32 min
Conscience First, and to the Pope Afterwards - Prof. Lewis Ayres
Prof. Lewis Ayres presents Newman's account of conscience as, not a private inner voice, but the echo of God's voice within the human being, that although refracted by sin and therefore requiring long formation in humility and obedience, is an entr...
September 7 · 35 min
Newman Against Hitler: Reflections on Ratzinger - Prof. Lewis Ayres
Prof. Lewis Ayres draws on Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent and Essay on the Development of Doctrine to argue that conscience must be educated through a long process of moral and doctrinal formation, and that the young Ratzinger draws t...
September 4 · 30 min
Imagination and Conscience - Prof. Medi Volpe
Prof. Medi Volpe argues that conscience is formed through the imagination, which is nurtured and filled by stories, so that discerning right action is less a matter of weighing propositions than of recognizing one's part in a larger story.This lect...
September 3 · 38 min
Conscience in Everyday Life - Prof. Medi Volpe
Prof. Medi Volpe argues that conscience is not an abstract faculty but an everyday moral sense that must be awakened and nurtured, and that grace works through ordinary channels — stories, scripture, friends, and even our failures — to form us, lit...
September 2 · 53 min
Aquinas' Epistemology with Reflections from a Friar-Medical Doctor - Fr. Chris Gault, O.P.
Fr. Chris Gault, O.P. lays out Aquinas's epistemology of moderate realism, in which all knowledge begins with the senses and the agent intellect abstracts universal forms from phantasms, and defends it against skepticism, ancient and modern, includ...
September 1 · 47 min
Sanctity and the Discipline of Study - Fr. Ambrose Little, O.P.
Fr. Ambrose Little, O.P. argues that the natural human desire to know, though it draws the mind toward the contemplation of God, can only reach its fulfillment when purified and redirected by grace and the theological virtues, so that every discipl...
August 28 · 49 min
Justification According to St. Thomas - Prof. Erik Dempsey
Prof. Erik Dempsey explains St. Thomas Aquinas’s account of justification as God’s free gift of grace, which heals sin, moves human freedom, and forms believers in faith working through charity.This lecture was given on March 21st, 2026, at Dominic...
August 27 · 39 min
Shakespeare and Aquinas on Kinds of Knowing - Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak, O.P.
Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak shows how Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure exposes the limits of abstract knowledge and reveals why some truths can only be known through love, experience, and particular relationship.This lecture was given on April 11t...
August 26 · 55 min
Shakespeare and Aquinas on Prudence, Part Two - Fr. Jordan Zajac
Fr. Jordan Zajac takes Shakespeare’s most morally charged characters and Aquinas’s deepest insights on love, hatred, and prudence to show why holiness sometimes means not just loving the good, but fiercely refusing what corrupts it.This lecture was...
August 25 · 48 min
Shakespeare and Aquinas on Prudence, Part One - Fr. Jordan Zajac
Fr. Jordan Zajac uses Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Aquinas’s account of prudence to show how a person can know the good, reject it in imagination, and still fall into action through an inner collapse of judgment and will.This lecture was given on Apri...
August 24 · 54 min
The Priesthood of Christ and Your Beatitude - Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P.
Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P., explains how Christ’s eternal priesthood fulfills the human desire for beatitude by reconciling humanity to God through his self-offering and drawing believers into the life of heaven.This lecture was given on Marc...

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