By the close of Vatican II, many claimed that Pope St. John XXIII’s call for aggiornamento entailed a turn away from Thomistic philosophy and theology in Catholic higher education. In response, Ralph McInerny wrote Thomism in an Age of Renewal, “out of the conviction that the Church has been right all along in directing us to St. Thomas and She continues to be right.” He granted (with mordant wit) the inadequacy of Thomism taken as a pat “system” to be learned by rote from manuals, but insisted that St. Thomas himself, encountered in his own writings and philosophical spirit, ought to remain “the model and mentor of the intellectual life of Catholics”—including the very work of aggiornamento.
For many years, McInerny was himself a model and mentor for new generations of Thomists. In honor of the 15th anniversary of his death, the fourth Thomistic Summer Conference (a series inspired by McInerny’s own summer conferences at Notre Dame) invites papers on the question he asked in Thomism in an Age of Renewal, renewed in the present: “What in our age is the role of Thomas Aquinas?” We welcome papers on St. Thomas as theologian and philosopher as well as papers on the substantive content of his thought—especially on those subjects that were of special interest to McInerny.
Join us for three days of engaging lectures and lively conversation exploring the thought of St. Thomas, a champion of the essential harmony between faith and reason.
Featured Speakers
Thomas Hibbs is currently J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, where he is also Dean Emeritus, having served for 16 years as the inaugural dean of the Honors College. He has been a department chair (Boston College), a dean (Baylor University), and a president (University of Dallas).
Hibbs has published eight books, including three on Aquinas. The most recent is Theology of Creation: Ecology, Art, and Laudato Si, University of Notre Dame Press, 2023). Hibbs received his Ph.D. from Notre Dame in 1987, where his director was Ralph McInerny. With John O’Callaghan, he edited and contributed to Recovering Nature: Essays in Natural Philosophy, Ethics, and Metaphysics in Honor of Ralph McInerny.
John O’Callaghan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. He has taught at Creighton University, the University of Portland, and the University of Notre Dame. He has written or edited a number of books and articles in the area of Thomistic studies, including Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn (2003) and Recovering Nature (with Thomas Hibbs, 1999). He is a past President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and is a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas (PASTA).
Christopher Kaczor is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, the Honorary Professor for the Renewal of Catholic Intellectual Life at Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire Institute, and a visiting fellow at the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture.
He is the author of 17 books, including The Ethics of Abortion (Routledge, 2022, 3rd edition) and Disputes in Bioethics (Notre Dame, 2020). His research on issues of ethics, philosophy, and religion has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, NPR, BBC, EWTN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, and The Today Show. He can be found on X-Twitter at @Prof_Kaczor.
Anthony Andres, after graduating from Thomas Aquinas College in 1987, studied philosophy under Ralph McInerny at the University of Notre Dame, receiving a Ph.D. in 1993. From 1993 to 2007 he taught in the philosophy department at Christendom College, where he was the chairman from 2002 to 2004. In 2007 he returned to Thomas Aquinas College as a tutor. He has published articles on philosophy and logic in Faith and Reason, Second Spring, Logos, and The Aquinas Review. He is currently at work on a book, tentatively titled Dialectic: A Road to the Principles.
Patrick M. Gardner has been a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College since 2012, and in 2019 moved to the New England campus, serving as its first Assistant Dean for Student Affairs. He studied at Harvard (B.A. 2001), and then at Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute (Ph.D. 2009), where he wrote his dissertation, Dante and the Suffering Soul, under the direction of Ralph McInerny.
He has lectured or published on a range of subjects, including Dante and the Blessed Virgin, St. John Henry Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, and most recently, the relation of infused and acquired moral virtues in St. Thomas. He is a member of The Sacra Doctrina Project.
Registration / Accommodations Info
- Registration Fee: $120 (covers all meals, including Saturday evening’s banquet dinner). Registration fees will be waived for those whose paper proposals are accepted.
- On-Campus Lodging: $200 single occupancy for up to four nights (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; private room with a shared/common bathroom in a single-sex dormitory; linens provided)
- Off-campus lodging can be found at various nearby accommodations
- To register and reserve accommodations, please visit our online form
- Check-in: Wednesday, 2:00–5:00 p.m., or Thursday, 8:30–10:00 a.m.
- REGISTRATION DEADLINE: APRIL 21
- Deadline to request rides to or from the Airporter shuttle stop in Ventura: May 30
Registereee
Thomas Aquinas College believes that to learn is to discover and grow in the truth about reality. It is the truth, and nothing less, that sets men free. And because truth is both natural and supernatural, our academic program aims at both natural and divine wisdom. In particular, we look to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Common Doctor of the Church, whose extensive writings testify to the natural harmony between faith and reason.
Thomas Aquinas College is truly unique among American colleges and universities. In place of textbooks, students here study the Great Books of Western civilization — the works that have shaped the course of history and guided the development of the major disciplines (mathematics and science, language and literature, philosophy and theology). With truth as their aim, our students engage in this four-year pursuit, attempting to answer the enduring questions raised by the authors of these great works, not in vast lecture halls, but in vigorous classroom discussions of 15-18 students.
This curriculum presents the arts and sciences of liberal education as a comprehensive whole. There are no majors, no minors, no electives, and no specializations. The works studied are arranged so as to build upon one another, and together they form a comprehensive and integrated whole. After four years of study, graduates are awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree, having completed 146 semester hours.