The Thomistic Institute

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

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

Dr. Bronwen McShea uncovers the rich but often forgotten history of Catholic women in the arts and sciences, showing how figures from late antiquity through the early modern period—nuns, scholars, patrons, and university professors—have long made serious intellectual and cultural contributions within the Catholic tradition.

This lecture was given on October 16th, 2025, at The United States Naval Academy.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Bronwen McShea is a historian of Catholicism from medieval to modern times and is the author of three books: Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know (Ignatius Press, 2024); La Duchesse: The Life of Marie de Vignerot, Cardinal Richelieu's Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France (Pegasus Books, 2023); and Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and New France (Nebraska Press, 2019). Her reviews, articles, and essays have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, First Things, America Magazine, The Journal of Religious History, and many other popular and academic periodicals. She has held research and teaching positions at Columbia University, Princeton University, Loyola University Chicago, and several other institutions. She holds a Ph.D. in Early Modern History from Yale University and both an M.T.S. in the History of Christianity and B.A. in Intellectual History from Harvard University.

Keywords: Catholic Women And Scholarship, Catholic Women In Science, Early Modern Catholic Women, Hildegard Of Bingen, Laura Bassi And Bologna, Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Medieval Nuns And Learning, Renaissance Humanism, Women Of The Church

Prof. Christopher Tollefsen argues from a Thomistic natural law perspective that it is always morally wrong to intend the death of an innocent human being, contending that this absolute norm binds both private individuals and public authorities alike.

This lecture was given on November 15th, 2025, at University of Florida

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Christopher Tollefsen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. He has published over 100 articles in journals and edited collections, and a similar number of popular essays in venues such as Public Discourse, First Things, and National Review. He is the author of Lying and Christian Ethics and the forthcoming Killing and Christian Ethics, and is co-author of The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession (with Dr. Farr Curlin) and Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (with Robert P. George). In 2019-20, he served as a Commissioner on the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. He has twice been a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University, and in 2024-25 was a Visiting Fellow at the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.

Keywords: ​Absolute Prohibition Of Killing, Augustine And Aquinas, Double Effect Principle, Ethics Of Self-Defense, Human Dignity And Life, Natural Law Theory, Public Authority And Violence, Thomistic Moral Theology, War And Capital Punishment

Prof. Marshall Bierson contrasts Thomistic Catholic ethics with utilitarian and Kantian moral theories by arguing that the good is fundamentally an activity of loving persons rather than a state of affairs like aggregate happiness or an abstract form of rational nature.

This lecture was given on January 23rd, 2026, at Washington & Lee 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: Aristotelian Thomism, Catholic Ethics, Catholic Moral Philosophy, Intrinsic And Extrinsic Value, Kantian Rational Nature, Love And The Good, Pleasure And Moral Value, Thomistic Axiology, Utilitarianism And Happiness