Why the Catholic Church Has Priests – Fr. Dominic Langevin, O.P.

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. Dominic Langevin, O.P., is the dean and an assistant professor of dogmatic theology at the Dominican House of Studies, where he teaches courses principally about the sacraments and the liturgy. He did his undergraduate degree at Yale University. He entered the Dominican Order in 1998 and was ordained a priest in 2005. He earned his doctorate from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is the author of the book From Passion to Paschal Mystery, has been editor of the journal The Thomist, and has been the secretary/treasurer of the Academy of Catholic Theology.Keywords: Christ the High Priest, Hierarchy, Holy Orders, Mediation and Sacraments, Ministerial Priesthood, In Persona Christi, Sacramental System, Why the Church Has Priests

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 School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia, he worked in software design at AT&T for five years before entering the Dominican Order in 1992. After obtaining his S.T.B./M.Div. (1998) and S.T.L. (2000) at the Dominican House of Studies, he served for three years in St. Pius Parish in Providence, R.I., before going on to complete his studies doctoral studies at the University of Fribourg in 2009. He was awarded the Thomas Aquinas Dissertation Prize by the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria University (2010) for his dissertation on God the Father in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. He now teaches at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., where he has also served as book review editor of The Thomist, chaplain to commuter students, and chaplain to the Immaculate Conception Chapter of Third Order Dominicans.Keywords: Aquinas on Predestination, Divine Providence, Efficacious and Sufficient Grace, Free Will and Foreknowledge, Molinism and Middle Knowledge, Reprobation, Single Predestination, Universal Salvific Will

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 Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas.  He has published widely on Thomas Aquinas, Thomism, and medieval and late scholastic philosophy.  His interests cover moral psychology, ethics, political philosophy, and metaphysics. His latest book is Thomas Aquinas on Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2024).Keywords: Aristotle's De Anima, Immaterial Intellect, Immortality of the Soul, Intentional Presence, Philosophy of Mind, Soul, Subsistent Form, Universals and Knowledge

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 assistant professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America. His research centers on the intersection of ethics and philosophical anthropology. He is particularly focused on the work of Elizabeth Anscombe and in exploring how her Thomisticly inflected philosophical psychology clarifies moral absolutes.Keywords: Aristotle, Energeia and Kinesis, Friendship and Contemplation, Meaning of Human Activity, Nihilism and Work–Play, Practical and Theoretical Reason, Thomistic Friendship with God

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, and Religious Studies, and is the Assistant Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin for over ten years, during which time he has offered classes in the history of political philosophy, on the Bible and its interpreters, on American political thought, on classical philosophy and literature, and others. His favorite classes to teach are Jerusalem and Athens, a class comparing the political, moral, and theological ideas of the Hebrew Bible to Aristotle's, and the Question of Relativism, a class on what he considers the central quandary of our time. He writes primarily about Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and he is currently studying John Locke's commentaries on St. Paul's epistles. Last but not least, he is an Eagle Scout.Keywords: Asceticism and Grace, Desire, Natural Law, Original Sin, Pleasure and Temperance, Screwtape Letters, Virtue and the Good Life

Prof. Timothy O’Connor examines why an all-loving, omnipotent God permits horrendous suffering and explores how, within a Christian framework, such evils can be “defeated” and taken up into the communion of saints as part of our eternal union with God.This lecture was given on December 3rd, 2025, at University of Scranton.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Tim O’Connor is the Mahlon Powell Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has held research fellowships at the Universities of Oxford, St. Andrews, and Notre Dame. He specializes in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion. He has given 200+ lectures in 26 countries. He has written two books, one on free will and the other on God and ultimate explanation. He is currently co-writing a large and wide-ranging book entitled Human Persons: A Contemporary Philosophical-Scientific Synthesis. Having spent many years as an ecumenical Protestant, Tim was received back into the Catholic Church in February 2024. He has an apostolate to help Protestants better understand and be receptive to the fullness of Catholic faith.Keywords: Communion of Saints, Eleonore Stump, Horrendous Evil, Marylyn McCord Adams, Problem of Evil, Suffering and Divine Love, Theodicy, Union With God, Wandering in Darkness

Sr. Mary Madeline Todd draws upon Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, and friendship with Christ in order to show that sharing a common journey and life, together with mutual self-gift, turns everyday relationships into true, virtuous friendships that enable us not merely to survive but to thrive in happiness with God and one another.This lecture was given on November 27th, 2025, at Thomistic Institute in Limerick.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Sister Mary Madeline Todd, O.P., a Dominican Sister of the Congregation of Saint Cecilia, has spent over three decades joyfully living consecrated life and sharing the teaching ministry of Christ. After completing a master’s degree in English at the University of Memphis and in theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Sister was blessed to study in Rome, earning her doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Sister Mary Madeline speaks and writes on spiritual and moral theology. She currently teaches theology at Aquinas College in Nashville, where she finds joy in helping the next generation discover the liberating freedom of who they are in Christ.Keywords: Aristotle on Friendship, Benevolence, Divine Friendship, Friendship, Mutuality, True and Virtuous Friendship, Willing the Good of the Other

Dr. R. J. Snell analyzes our “burnout society” as an achievement-obsessed culture that drives people to anxiety, depression, and exhaustion by demanding endless self-optimization while starving them of leisure, contemplation, and a meaningful narrative for their lives.This lecture was given on December 8th, 2025, at University of Pennsylvania.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: Achievement Society, Attention Economy, Burnout and Depression, Byung-Chul Han, Disenchantment and Meaning, Existential Poverty, Leisure and Contemplation, Sabbath Rest, Student Anxiety, Thin Soul

Dr. Kevin Kambo argues that our culture has moved from a “dictatorship of relativism” to a “tyranny of pathos,” in which appeals to hurt feelings and empathy displace reasoned deliberation about truth, justice, and human nature.This lecture was given on October 23rd, 2025, at Fordham University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Kevin M. Kambo is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas in Irving, TX. Before completing his doctoral studies at the Catholic University of America, he earned a bachelor of science in Chemistry at Stanford University and worked as an intellectual property paralegal in Manhattan, NY. Dr. Kambo specialises in classical Greek philosophy, particularly on Platonic moral psychology and on the dramatic elements of Platonic dialogues. He also works on the reception of Platonic thought through history, from late antique (e.g., in Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo) through contemporary (e.g., W. E. B. Du Bois and Simone Weil) thinkers, and has broader scholarly interests in philosophy of technology, philosophy and literature (especially tragedy), philosophy of race, and liberal education. He is a partisan of the original Star Wars trilogy, P. G. Wodehouse, and receiving postcards--not necessarily in that order.Keywords: Aristotle and Logos, Benedict XVI Regensburg, Dictatorship of Relativism, Ethics and Politics, John Paul II, Nature and Human Flourishing, Politics of Pathos, Relativism and Tolerance, Tyranny of Pathos

Prof. Steven Jensen argues that right and wrong are not just a matter of opinion by defending moral realism over moral relativism, showing that moral truths are grounded in human nature and goals rather than mere subjective attitudes.This lecture was given on November 13th, 2025, at Fordham University.For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.About the Speakers:Steven J Jensen holds the Bishop Nold Chair in Graduate Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, where he teaches in The Center for Thomistic Studies. His fields of research include bioethics, moral psychology, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, human nature, and natural law.Keywords: Argument From Disagreement, Flat Earth Example, Human End and Purpose, Moral Objectivity, Moral Realism, Moral Relativism, Rationalization and Desire, Right and Wrong, Thomistic Moral Theory