Thomistic Institute Graduate Scholarships

What is the Thomistic Institute?

The Thomistic Institute is an academic institute of the Dominican House of Studies. Its mission is to strengthen the intellectual formation of Christians at universities, in the Church, and in the wider public square. The flagship program of the TI is its campus chapters program, which consists of over 100 university chapters and a network of over 200 distinguished professors in philosophy and theology. This network is a great asset to the students of the DHS. 

Through the generosity of its donors, the Thomistic Institute is pleased to offer full-ride scholarships for the following graduate degrees in Theology at the Dominican House of Studies: 

• Master of Arts in Theology (MA)
• Licentiate in Sacred Theology in Thomistic Studies (STL)
• Doctorate in Sacred Theology in Thomistic Studies (STD)
• Doctorate in Theology in Thomistic Studies (PhD)

What does a TI scholarship entail?*

• Full tuition
• A living stipend of $20,000 per academic year
• Additional funds to cover academic fees & books

*For the PhD Program: The TI will provide up to four years of funding. If a fifth year of funding is needed, the student can apply for a one-year extension.

Scholarship awardees work up to 8 hours per week on research projects for the DHS faculty, or on Thomistic Institute projects with the TI staff.

Apply by:

• January 8 for the STD or PhD
• January 28 for the STL or MA 

To matriculate in the following fall semester

Click here to learn more and apply for a TI Scholarship

Presidential Scholarships

The DHS is pleased to offer a limited number of Presidential Scholarships to students intending to matriculate with us in the Fall.

Scholarships are available for all of our degree programs, and will be awarded based on academic merit and student need. These awards may be partial or full, covering part or all of your tuition and fees. Presidential Scholarships do not include a living stipend.

To be considered for a Presidential Scholarship, you must submit your application for admission to the PFIC by January 8. 

In addition to this application, you must send a “Presidential Scholarship Personal Statement” and a current CV to our Student Services Officer, Dr. Rebecca Marisseau, at rmarisseau@dhs.edu, by January 8. 

Your personal statement should be:

• 1-2 pages, double-spaced
• 12-point font
• Explain (1) which degree program you are applying for, (2) your qualifications and personal strengths for such a program of studies, (3) why you want to pursue this degree at the Dominican House of Studies, and (4) how you see this degree preparing you for the future you hope for yourself. 

Your CV should include your educational background and any relevant professional/volunteer experience, leadership roles, academic honors received, etc. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Marisseau at rmarisseau@dhs.edu.

Yet Aquinas is brilliant and original not so much in the individual points that he makes.  In fact, if you read him carefully, you discover that quite often he relies heavily on his predecessors, on the great tradition in which he stands.  

Rather, in my view, Aquinas’s greatness consists especially in the breadth and power of his synthesis, which aims at understanding the whole – that is, it aims at wisdom. Aquinas achieved this synthesis through his surpassing ability to grasp the essential of the arguments of others, even those coming from quite different traditions.  

His sources range from the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome (including the then-newly-discovered texts of Aristotle), Jewish and Muslim thinkers, and the best science of his day, to Sacred Scripture, the Church Fathers and early Church councils, and the widely-diverse views of other medieval philosophers and theologians.  

But the value of Aquinas’s synthesis is greater than the sum of its individual parts, precisely because Aquinas aims to offer an overarching and coherent account of the whole of Christian wisdom.    

One might imagine that the primary explanation of this was that this medieval Dominican friar was naturally brilliant, one of the greatest minds in history.  And I’m sure there is truth to that.

But it is also true, if you read his works and get to know his life, that, for him, the search for wisdom involved a great deal of focused and intense effort.

It included groundbreaking historical research, philosophical and theological disputations in the heart of the greatest universities of his day, frequent lecturing and teaching, commenting on major works of philosophy and theology, founding a Dominican Faculty of theology in Rome, as well as his own ambitious writing projects

At the same time, he never thought of this as a merely academic project or a scholarly exercise.  

Rather, the search for wisdom was, rather, a central and organizing theme for his life as a whole.  

And it is here that I think we find a key secret ingredient – or, perhaps better, an invisible yet powerful principle – to his wonderful success in the pursuit of wisdom.

Aquinas knew that this search required much of him, but that in the end, wisdom is a gift from above, a gift from God, a gift of grace, and a gift that calls for a whole way of life.

It is precisely to this project that this Pontifical Faculty is dedicated.  

We are gathered here in a Dominican Studium – a house of the Order, and a Theological Faculty consecrated to the study of Sacred Truth.  

We are in this beautiful chapel which, for the past 120 years, has been hallowed by prayer and worship, as generation after generation of teachers and students have stepped away from their labors of the desk, the library, and the classroom, to encounter the living Word of Wisdom in this sacred place.

Our Dominican constitutions have something important to say about the mission of such an institution. They affirm that, by our study, we are drawn into the contemplative life as we ponder the wisdom of God.  Sacred study also equips us for the doctrinal service of the Church, so that we can proclaim the Gospel to the world.

This pattern comes from St. Dominic himself.  In founding the Order, he “linked study to the ministry of salvation.” He directed the first Dominicans to the just-emerging universities, and “sent them ‘to study, preach and establish priories’ in the larger cities.”    

This is the reason why, in 1905, our province moved our Faculty from Ohio to Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital, to this Dominican House of Studies across the street from the new Catholic University of America, founded by the U.S. Bishops to elevate the intellectual life of this great nation.

On this past Saturday, friars from our Province organized the third annual Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage.

Perhaps some of you were there.  We had over 3000 people packed into the Shrine across the street. It was amazing and consoling. It was a beautiful day of pilgrimage and prayer.  Many of us heard confessions for hours.  And dozens of us could not keep up with the demand.  There were so many graces on offer.

At one point during the program, as I sat in a pew with the other friars and listened to the preacher – one of our brothers – I was powerfully moved, moved to the point of tears.

Where has this event come from?  It is obviously a work of God, a fruit of grace. It obviously, so surpasses anything that any of us could have arranged, from our own power. 

And then it struck me, thinking about this day, that this event emerged from the work of our alumni, of graduates of this faculty. It was shaped in the beginning, I think, from their prayers and their worship in this chapel. Fr. Joseph Anthony Kress and Fr. John Paul Kern and the other priests – young priest – who conceived, organized, and so excellently executed it were not very long ago student brothers here, sitting in our classes!  

Is this not the way God works? He gives new life to his Church, and through it, to the world, by means of unworthy and lowly instruments.  humble place.  A small place can have an enormous impact.  It is like a mustard seed, which looks very small, but grows into a great tree where the birds of heaven make their home.  And isn’t this the way God’s life works?

This supernatural life, once it is planted, takes root and grows with a trajectory and a beautiful dynamic of its own, in ways we might not expect.  It’s like a child who grows up and becomes something that we never imagined.  It bears new fruits that we did not foresee, and it generates new life yet again.

I feel like we, the faculty and students of the Dominican House of studies, stand in a very privileged place because we did not create this. We received it. We inherited it through no merits of our own and nothing that we did.  Now we see the way God is giving life, giving life to so many, in ways that we can’t account for, but that we get to be associated with in some small way.  

Think of all of the wonderful works and good things that we can see before our eyes that are happening around us.  Things that the recent graduates of this school are doing.
Think of:

• Godsplaining – the successful podcast of a group of our graduates
  
  
• The Thomistic Institute, which now has 106 chapters on secular campuses around the country, and 26 pending requests to start new ones.  Through the TI, our faculty is literally having a global impact, with new programs that have begun or that are now starting in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, E. Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Czech Republic, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Germany.
  
  
• The Hillbilly Thomists, our bluegrass band.
  
  
• The renewal at the Angelicum, which is after all being led by one of our alumni, with the help of 11 other friars from our province.
  
  
• And new things are starting all the time.  Just this past summer, a group of student brothers began a new apostolate- a traveling parish preaching apostolate on Long Island, where we accepted a parish from the diocese just recently.

All of these things have emerged, in a sense, from this Faculty, and have been nourished from this altar here in this chapel.

Now, we are not worthy of any of this.  It obviously surpasses anything that, of our own powers, we could ever accomplish.  Nor will it be of any value unless it comes from God and leads others back to him.

What, then, is the task set before us?  Well, let me turn back to our master Saint Thomas Aquinas.

In his many works, he exhorts his students to pursue this highest wisdom, with all of their strength and with every resource of their minds.  That is, he exhorts us today, he exhorts you: pursue the wisdom of God, make it your most precious treasure, let it guide every action of your life.  Or, to put it another way, seek above all to know and to love God who is eternal Wisdom.   

St. Thomas Aquinas would tell you that this is the mind’s very purpose.  It is why God made you.  And it is the true goal of any intellectual life – and, rightly understood, of the Christian life itself.  

Indeed, St Thomas devoted himself to this. He’s our great model. Let me quote to you the beautiful and, unusually personal, words that he wrote at the beginning of his great work, the Summa Contra Gentiles.  Let us make his desire our own:

“Therefore, with trust in divine mercy, pursuing the task of a wise man (although this surpasses our own powers), the proposal of our intention is to make clear (in our own small way) the truth which the Catholic faith professes, eliminating the contrary errors, so that I might truly say: “I owe this to God as the greatest task of my life, that my every word and thought would speak of him.” 

SCG I, c. 2

I propose it to you, professors, students, staff, and friends of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies.  I propose it as the greatest task of this institution – to speak of God and to draw others to him.  

May our patroness, the Blessed Virgin Mary, obtain this for us by her prayers, and may almighty God, who is the source of this holy inspiration, bring to completion the good work he has begun here at the Dominican House of Studies.

Fr. Dominic Legge

Dominican House of Studies

October 3, 2025

Presidential Installation Address

Rev. Dominic Legge, OP Named Next President of the Pontifical Faculty

Father Dominic Legge, OP, the Director of the Thomistic Institute, will become the new President of the Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican House of Studies on July 1^st. This comes after having been recommended by the Board of Trustees and nominated by the Chancellor of the school, Father Gerard Timoner, OP, the Master of the Dominican Order. His appointment was approved by the Holy See’s Dicastery for Culture and Education on March 21^st.

Father Legge entered the Dominican Order in 2001 and was ordained to the priesthood in 2007. He joined the faculty in 2014. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a licentiate in philosophy from the Catholic University of America, a licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Faculty, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He is an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.  He is the author of The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2017), and numerous articles and book chapters on the thought of Aquinas.

A frequent lecturer both nationally and internationally, Father Legge brings a wide range of experience in administration, teaching, preaching, and scholarship.

Speaking about his new role, Father Legge said: “I am deeply honored to be named as the President of our Pontifical Faculty.  Under Fr. Petri’s leadership, the school has become stronger and better, in continuity with a long tradition of excellence in teaching sacred truth.  I am looking forward to building on this legacy in order better to serve the Dominican Order and the Church in the proclamation of the Gospel in our time.”

Hearing of the Holy See’s approval of Father Legge’s appointment, the current President, Father Thomas Petri, OP, commented, “By the grace of God, the Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican House of Studies has become a lodestar for clarity in teaching and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I couldn’t be more proud of our faculty, staff, and students. I am confident the school will continue to thrive with Father Legge’s leadership in the years to come.”

Father Petri served in the administration of the Pontifical Faculty for twelve years, first as the Dean and then as President of the school. Among many accomplishments, his tenure was marked by solidifying the internal operations of the school, working with the faculty to elevate the standards of the various degree programs, and successfully navigating the requirements of both the 2012 and 2022 accreditation cycles, particularly with regard to programmatic and outcomes assessment.

Most notably, as President, he successfully cultivated a network of friends and benefactors to share in the mission of the School by supporting it financially. This included a transformative initiative that more than doubled the school’s endowment.

When his term ends on June 30th, Father Petri will take a sabbatical and eventually return to Washington, DC, where he will begin an apostolate with Catholic media.

We are pleased to announce that His Excellency, Bishop Daniel Flores S.T.D., Bishop of Brownsville, TX, will receive the Saint Dominic Medal at this year’s Commencement ceremony. This honor is awarded to those individuals who, through demonstrated competency in their life’s work, have advanced the ideals of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, thus promoting and bringing recognition to the charism of the Dominican Order. During Bishop Flores’s episcopacy, he has embodied the Pontifical Faculty’s commitments to truth and holy excellence by implementing innovative and effective programs to spread the Gospel in his diocese with a privileged focus on synodality.

Bishop Flores will give the commencement speech at this year’s ceremony on Friday, May 16 where both civil and ecclesiastical degrees will be conferred on the graduating students of the Pontifical Faculty of Immaculate Conception.

Due to limited capacity, attendance at the Commencement is by invitation only. Please pray for Bishop Flores and the graduates of the Pontifical Faculty for God’s blessing in their work of proclaiming the clarity of Christ to a confused world.

We are pleased to announce that Mr. John Garvey, Esq., former president of the Catholic University of America and noted constitutional law scholar, will receive the Saint Dominic Medal at this year’s Commencement ceremony. This honor is awarded to those individuals who, through demonstrated competency in their life’s work, have advanced the ideals of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, thus promoting and bringing recognition to the charism of the Dominican Order. During Mr. Garvey’s tenure as president of the Catholic University of America he has embodied the Pontifical Faculty’s commitments to truth and holy excellence by implementing innovative and effective programs to renew the academic rigor of our nation’s oldest pontifical university.

Mr. Garvey will give the commencement speech at this year’s ceremony on Friday, May 10 where both civil and ecclesiastical degrees will be conferred on the graduating students of the Pontifical Faculty of Immaculate Conception.

Due to limited capacity, attendance at the Commencement is by invitation only. Please pray for Mr. Garvey and the graduates of the Pontifical Faculty for God’s blessing in their work of proclaiming the clarity of Christ to a confused world.

Emeritus Professor Father Basil Cole, O.P., was recently given one of the highest honors of the Dominican Order. He was named a Master of Sacred Theology and now follows in a long line of great theologians going back to the founding of the Order. With overwhelming support, the 2022 quadrennial Provincial Chapter of the Province of St. Joseph nominated Father Cole to the Master of the Order for this honor. After consulting other experts, the Master, Father Gerard Francisco Timoner, O.P. made Father Cole a Master of Sacred Theology on October 17^th.

            During vespers on Wednesday, January 10^th in the Chapel of the Priory of the Immaculate Conception, the decree naming Father a Master was read and the insignia of the title were conferred. First, he received the ring as a sign that he has been espoused by Wisdom. In keeping with tradition, the ring is set with an amethyst stone. It also bears the shields of both the Dominican Order and the Province of St. Joseph. He was then given the black and red four-peaked biretta, which is a symbol of Masters of Theology, and is often worn during solemn academic ceremonies.

            A festive dinner with guests and the community followed.

            On Thursday, January 11^th Father Cole delivered a magisterial lecture in Aquin Hall to an audience of nearly one hundred people. The title of his lecture was “Spiritual Beauty and the Challenge of the Life of Virtue.” Following closely the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, the singular Master of Theology, Father Cole elucidated the importance of the arts—particularly literature, painting, and music—in helping a person grow in virtue.

            On receiving the honor, Father Cole noted that the honor belonged not just to him, but to all those who’ve encouraged him, supported him, and to all of his students over the years. He continues to write and publish. He has a number of manuscripts preparing for publication.

We are pleased to announce that Msgr. Andrew Baker S.T.D., Rector of Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD, will receive the Saint Dominic Medal at this year’s Commencement ceremony. This honor is awarded to those individuals who, through demonstrated competency in their life’s work, have advanced the ideals of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, thus promoting and bringing recognition to the charism of the Dominican Order. During Msgr. Baker’s tenure as rector has embodied the Pontifical Faculty’s commitments to truth and holy excellence by implementing innovative and effective programs to cultivate the formation of priests.

Msgr. Baker will give the commencement speech at this year’s ceremony on Friday, May 12 where both civil and ecclesiastical degrees will be conferred on the graduating students of the Pontifical Faculty of Immaculate Conception.

Due to limited capacity, attendance at the Commencement is by invitation only. Please pray for Msgr. Baker and the graduates of the Pontifical Faculty for God’s blessing in their work of proclaiming the clarity of Christ to a confused world.

This semester, Prof. Jonathan Lunine, David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences at Cornell University, joined the faculty of the Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican House of Studies for a semester-long appointment as the McDonald Agape Visiting Scholar. 

This partnership is made possible through a grant by the McDonald Agape Foundation, whose mission is encouraging Christian scholars and academic scholarship. The McDonald Agape Foundations grant, made to the Thomistic Institute, will support a visiting scholar at the Dominican House of Studies for one semester each academic year through the 2025-2026 academic year. 

Lunine is Director of the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and does research in astrophysics, planetary science, and astrobiology. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and among other awards is the recipient of the Jean Dominique Cassini Medal of the European Geosciences Union (2015) and the Basic Sciences Award of the International Academy of Astronautics (2009). 

The author of several books, Lunine is also co-investigator on the Juno mission now in orbit around Jupiter, using data from several instruments on the spacecraft, and on the MISE instrument for the Europa Clipper mission. He is on the science team for the James Webb Space Telescope, focusing on characterization of extrasolar planets and Kuiper Belt objects. 

Lunine’s appointment at the Dominican House of Studies is for spring semester 2023. During his time in D.C., Lunine will co-teach a course titled “Knowing the Cosmos: Contemporary Astronomy, Theology, and Philosophy” with Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., associate professor of systematic theology at the Dominican House of Studies and Director of the Thomistic Institute.

The course “will engage fundamental questions about the visible order God has created, both from the perspective of contemporary astronomy, and from that of theology and philosophy, especially as informed by the principles of the Thomistic tradition,” according to the course description. 

Lunine will also help lead an intellectual retreat for Thomistic Institute students, undertake academic research, and participate in the academic and spiritual life of the Dominican House of Studies. He has previously collaborated with the Thomistic Institute as a speaker for Thomistic Institute conferences and other events and has filmed several episodes for the Aquinas 101: Science and Faith YouTube series. 

The Thomistic Institute is an academic institute of the Pontifical Faculty at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. It exists to promote Catholic truth in the contemporary world by strengthening the intellectual formation of Christians at universities, in the Church, and in the wider public square. 

Photo by Jesse Winter

On the morning of Thursday, January 5^th, the Dominican community at the Dominican House of Studies had a Memorial Mass for Pope Benedict XVI. The President of the Pontifical Faculty, Father Thomas Petri, O.P., celebrated and preached the Mass. His brief homily is below.

Quotations are from Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, and two book-length interviews with Peter Seewald: God and the World (published by Ignatius Press in 2002) and Last Testament (published by Bloomsbury in 2016).

Nobody who had followed the life, writings, and preaching of Joseph Ratzinger was surprised to learn last week that the last sentiment he articulated as he was fading from this world into the next was a simple profession of love for Jesus Christ. 

His whole life was given over to that personal encounter with the Lord, which, he said, “gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” It had certainly done so for him. He knew Jesus to be the way to the Father—the way, the truth, and the life.

We can see throughout Pope Benedict’s life a desire to grow closer to Christ, pursuing an ever deeper encounter with him, but not only that. He sought to bring Christ—his teaching and his life—into greater clarity. 

With a certain meekness, trusting in the truth of the Revealed Word, the authority of the Church, and the power of reason and faith to work together, Pope Benedict was always prepared to clarify, defend, and illuminate Christ and his teaching against any attempt to relativize the Lord, his saving message, his saving presence, to the whims of the world.

He once said that he thought that the task of his papacy was “to highlight the centrality of faith in God, and give people the courage to have faith, courage to live concretely in the world with faith.” 

The emeritus pope didn’t expect his papacy to last long, and thought this was the task that he could accomplish. His papacy lasted eight years. 

His resignation was remarkable for a whole host of reasons that have been rehearsed and will continue to be rehearsed for years to come. But more remarkable is how long Benedict lived as emeritus pope; it was longer than he had reigned as pope. 

Though he remained hidden, we nonetheless had glimpses of him for the nearly ten years of his life in a monastery through interviews, letters, and photos. We saw a pope freed from the burden of office who was able to return to his heart’s desire: contemplating and encountering the Lord. 

He had the experience I suspect most older people have who take religion seriously, who take their faith seriously. After he retreated to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery, he said that he had come to find “many statements from the Gospels more challenging in their greatness and gravity.” For him, Christ’s words had become more mysterious and awesome than before.

On the one hand, he noted, that in old age you’re more deeply practiced. “Life has taken its shape. The fundamental decisions have been made.” But on the other hand, you feel the difficulty of life’s big questions more deeply, and the weight of the problems in the world and in the Church more profoundly.

We should pray to the Lord to arrive at such a place in our old age. 

Perhaps as a consolation, he said “one also feels the greatness of Jesus Christ’s words, which evade interpretation [as one gets older] more often than before.”

He always considered himself an average Christian. Someone who could always speak to Christ, who, nevertheless as a “lowly little man” did “not always reach all the way up to [the Lord].” 

Pope Benedict always believed there would “be few people whose lives are pure and fulfilled in all respects.” But he hoped that there would also “be few people whose lives have become an irredeemable and total No.” 

When asked in recent years about whether he feared death, he said this: “Despite all the confidence I have that the loving God cannot forsake me, the closer you come to his face, the more intensely you feel how much you have done wrong. In this respect, the burden of guilt always weighs on someone, but the basic trust is of course always there.”

He vowed that when he finally would stand before the Almighty, he would “plead with him to show leniency towards [his] wretchedness.” Surely, not for significant things, but for all the ways that he could have done better. All the omissions and deficient commissions. 

That’s why the Church has a memorial Mass for him. Many memorial Masses.

Who can claim that at the moment of death he is absolutely ready to stand directly before God without shame and without sin? Certainly not Pope Benedict XVI.

He thought most people, faithful as they were, would find themselves in purgatory. Broken vessels that want to be put right.

“Purgatory,” he once said, “basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That he can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with him and can stand there in the fullness of life…. When it comes down to it, we are all glad that God himself can still put right what we cannot.” 

So we pray. We pray for this servant of the servants of God, Pope Benedict, that God put right in him everything that was wrong or broken. We pray his sins be forgiven. 

That Father Benedict, as he once hoped to be known, be brought into the presence of God which he liked to think would be an “always new” encounter, “a perpetual, unending encounter, with new discoveries and new joy.” Forever. 

Should he reach that place with Christ, as we confidently hope he will, we will then count on his prayers for the Church, which he loved as the bride of Christ, and which he served so well.

Praying for him now, we pray that one day, by the mercy of God, to benefit from his intercession. This is the Church’s final gift to him and her expectation in hope for him. 

✠

The portrait used in the image above was drawn by Igor V. Babailov