Show Notes
Fr. Chris Gault, O.P. explores why St. Thomas Aquinas remains a vital guide for contemporary students, emphasizing that his systematic approach to theology fosters both intellectual clarity and a deeper interior life.
This lecture was given on April 16th, 2026, at Maynooth University.
For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events
About the Speaker:
Fr. Chris Vincent Gault, OP, was born and raised in Belfast in the north of Ireland, where he studied medicine at Queen's University Belfast. Qualifying as a doctor in 2013, he began to train as an emergency physician, before leaving medicine after 3 years to enter the Irish Province of the Order of Preachers. Ordained as a Dominican priest in July 2024, and after having completed his studies at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, he was assigned to the convent of St. Mary of the Isles in Cork, where he now resides and ministers, particularly to the youth and young adults of that city.
This project/publication was made possible through the support of Grant 63391 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
Keywords: Faith And Reason, Christian Humanism, Scholasticism, Dominican, Human Flourishing
More from The Thomistic Institute
Prof. Scott Cleveland explores the Aristotelian and Thomistic vision of friendship, arguing that true flourishing requires overcoming the vices of envy and apathy through the practice of charity and virtuous love.
Prof. Erik Dempsey explores Original Sin as a fundamental, lived reality inherently inclining the human person toward wrongdoing, but recognizing our brokenness is essential for understanding our constant need for divine grace and justification.
Prof. Adam Eitel argues that modern identity theories ultimately fail because they lack a stable metaphysical grounding, and he proposes an alternative view rooted in Saint Thomas Aquinas’s exposition of Psalm 8.
Fr. Irenaeus Dunlevy examines the contemporary crisis of identity by contrasting modern fluid subjectivism with the Thomistic realist perspective of the human person, arguing our true identity is rooted in our nature as beings created by God and ordered toward Him
Prof. Adam Eitel contrasts the modern, self-constituted notions of identity with the Thomistic understanding of man as a creature capable of seeing God., whereby our human identity is fundamentally reordered from the Adamic image to the image of Christ