The Thomistic Institute

Prof. James Felak argues that John Paul II used Polish saints as powerful symbols of faith, moral courage, and national identity to inspire resistance against communism and affirm the Church’s role in Poland’s history.

This lecture was given on October 31st, 2026, at St. Albert's Priory.

To make a gift this June, visit https://truth.thomisticinstitute.org/pod.

About the Speaker:

James Felak is a Professor of History and current holder of the Newman Center Term Professorship in Catholic Christianity at the University of Washington. He specializes in Catholicism in East Central Europe and has authored two books on Catholic politics in Slovakia, and a book on Pope John Paul II and his visits to his native Poland during and after Communist rule there. This latter work is based on hundreds of pages of papal speeches and sermons, and the records of the Communist government and secret police as they monitored the Pope during his visits. Besides courses on modern Europe, Felak teaches “The History of Christianity” and “Catholic Classics in Historical Context.” The latter course covers the major Catholic writers and thinkers from St. Augustine and St. Benedict through G. K. Chesterton and Flannery O’Connor. Felak is from southwestern Pennsylvania, received his doctorate from Indiana University, and has resided in Seattle since 1989.

Keywords: Catholic Identity, Communion Of Saints, Communism, John Paul II, Poland, Sacred Space, Saints, Soviet Bloc, St Maximilian Kolbe

Prof. Jennifer Frey explores Flannery O’Connor’s bold claim that art can reveal truth in a way philosophy cannot, and shows how her fiction turns beauty, form, and imagination into a distinctive kind of knowledge.

This lecture was given on February 7th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.

To make a gift this June, visit https://truth.thomisticinstitute.org/pod.

About the Speaker:

Jennifer A. Frey is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa. She previously served as the inaugural Dean of the Honors College. Before coming to Oklahoma, she was an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where she was also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland Faculty Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to her tenure at Carolina, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and a junior fellow of the Society for the Liberal Arts. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and her B.A. in philosophy and medieval studies (with a classics minor) at Indiana University-Bloomington. In 2015, she was awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation, titled “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.” She has published widely on virtue and moral psychology, and she has edited three academic volumes on virtue and human action: Self Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology; Practical Truth; and Practical Wisdom (OUP, forthcoming 2025). Her writing has been featured in Breaking Ground, First Things, Image, Law and Liberty, The NewYork Times, The Point, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. She lives with her husband and six children in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Keywords: Art, Aesthetic Cognitivism, Flannery O’Connor, Fiction, Imagination, Literary Form, Parker’s Back, Practical Truth, Truth, Virtue

Fr. Brad Elliott argues that human beings are naturally social and are meant to flourish through the distinct but related societies of family, polity, and Church, with the Church uniquely ordering people to grace and the common good.

This lecture was given on November 1st, 2025, at St. Albert's Priory.

To make a gift this June, visit https://truth.thomisticinstitute.org/pod.

About the Speaker:

Fr. Brad Elliott was raised in Dayton Ohio and studied Jazz percussion at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. After being raised as a Missouri Synod Lutheran he entered the Catholic Church in 2002.

After moving to California, Fr. Brad became an active, performing musician, with a reputation as a highly sought after drummer on the international scene. Working in Los Angeles, CA, he performed and recorded various styles of modern music from Rock to jazz and big band. During his time in Los Angeles he performed and toured extensively with artists such as Annie Stela and Brie Larson.

After ten years as a professional drum set player and feeling a call to commit himself entirely to Jesus Christ, Fr. Brad chose to leave the music industry and become a Dominican friar within Western Dominican Province. After completing theological studies, he was ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ on June, 22nd 2018 at St. Dominic’s Church in San Francisco, CA.
In 2014 Fr. Brad received an MA in philosophy from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley CA. In 2021 he received a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC. In 2025 he completed a Doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC focusing on the role of human craft and participatory governance in the social doctrine of the Church. He is currently a professor of Moral Theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California. He authored the book The Shape of the Artistic Mind published by Pontifex University Press in 2023.

Keywords: Catholic Social Teaching, Church, Common Good, Cosmopolitanism, Family, Friendship, Polity, Society, Solidarity, State

Prof. Jennifer Frey asks whether Flannery O’Connor is really a “hillbilly Thomist” or a “hillbilly nihilist,” and uses her life and fiction to show how grace, reality, and shocking moral drama can expose the deepest truths about human nature.

This lecture was given on February 7th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.

To make a gift this June, visit https://truth.thomisticinstitute.org/pod.

About the Speaker:

Jennifer A. Frey is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa. She previously served as the inaugural Dean of the Honors College. Before coming to Oklahoma, she was an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where she was also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland Faculty Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to her tenure at Carolina, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and a junior fellow of the Society for the Liberal Arts. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and her B.A. in philosophy and medieval studies (with a classics minor) at Indiana University-Bloomington. In 2015, she was awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation, titled “Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life.” She has published widely on virtue and moral psychology, and she has edited three academic volumes on virtue and human action: Self Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology; Practical Truth; and Practical Wisdom (OUP, forthcoming 2025). Her writing has been featured in Breaking Ground, First Things, Image, Law and Liberty, The NewYork Times, The Point, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. She lives with her husband and six children in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Keywords: Christian Realism, Flannery O’Connor, Grace, Hillbilly Thomist, Misfit, Reality, Sin, Thomism, A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Prof. Michael Krom uses Aquinas to argue that while stealing is always morally wrong, urgent need can change what counts as rightful use of superabundant goods, revealing how private property is meant to serve the common good.

This lecture was given on February 12th, 2026, at Georgia Institute of Technology.

To make a gift this June, visit https://truth.thomisticinstitute.org/pod.

About the Speaker:

Michael Krom started reading Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae shortly after his conversion at the end of college. Upon learning about Flannery O’Connor’s “hillbilly Thomist” habit of reading Aquinas every night, he started studying two articles a day and completed the Summa while in graduate school at Emory University. As a professor at Saint Vincent College, he saw the urgent need for collegians and seminarians to receive a solid foundation in Aquinas’s philosophical theology. In 2020, he published Justice and Charity: An Introduction to Aquinas’s Moral, Economic, and Political Thought (Baker Academic Press), and teaches a Thomistic philosophy course each fall. In addition to continuing work on the moral, economic, and political topics covered in the book, his current research is on the influence of monastic spirituality on Aquinas; he is working on a monograph tentatively entitled Aquinas Among the Benedictines.

Keywords: Adverse Possession, Common Good, Divine Law, Human Law, Natural Law, Private Property, Robin Hood, Stealing, Theft, Urgent Need