The course requires no prior qualification or knowledge, but is intended to serve as an introduction or primer to Catholic, Thomistic philosophy and theology.

The course is offered to anyone wishing to engage in this area. It may be of special interest to future, current or former students of philosophy and theology, and secondary-level teachers of the same.

For queries about the course content or requirements, please contact Dr George Corbett at gc63@st-andrews.ac.uk

CEPHAS courses are built around a combination of philosophical and theological lectures and workshops, with plenty of discussion.

A guest talk, accompanied by good wine, is offered on one of the evenings.

The course is framed by opportunities for Mass during the day and communal prayer in the morning and evening.

Fr Simon Francis Gaine, O.P. teaches in the Theology Faculty of the Pontifical University of St Thomas. He lectures on the Theology of Grace and Christian Anthropology, and oversees the Faculty’s Doctoral Seminar.

Fr Simon holds the Pinckaers Chair in Theological Anthropology and Ethics in the Angelicum Thomistic Institute, of which he is also the Director. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Blackfriars’s Aquinas Institute, the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas, Rome, and the Vatican’s International Theological Commission. He is currently President (2025-27) of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain.

He studied theology at Oxford, and completed his doctorate in modern Catholic theology before joining the Dominican Order in 1995.

Prof. George Corbett (Director of CEPHAS) is Professor of Theology at the School of Divinity, University of St Andrews. Previously, he held positions as Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy, Trinity College, and affiliated lecturer, University of Cambridge. He received his BA (double first), MPhil (distinction), and PhD (AHRC-funded) from the University of Cambridge. He has also studied in Pisa (as an Erasmus-Socrates exchange scholar at La Scuola Normale Superiore), Rome (Institutum Pontificium Alterioris Latinitatis), and Montella (Vivarium Novum).

He teaches and researches in historical and systematic theology (with specialisms in medieval theology, Aquinas’s theology and its influence, and Catholic theology) and theology and the arts (with specialisms in Dante studies, sacred music, and theological aesthetics).

Prof. Corbett is the author of Dante’s Christian Ethics: Purgatory and Its Moral Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment (Oxford: Legenda, 2013),  and is co-editor of Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy, 3 vols (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015-17), an international collaboration by thirty-four scholars on a reappraisal of the whole poem. He has also published on Aquinas, sacred music, medieval theology, and the arts.

Sr Valery Walker, O.P. is a Dominican Sister of the Stone Congregation. In the early 1970s, she was introduced by Fr Romuald Horn O.P. to a particular method of studying the Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas. Since then, she has run numerous study days on Saint Thomas study days and weekends.

Sr. Magdalene Eitenmiller, O.P. is a Dominican sister of the Stone Congregation.

She received a Master’s degree in Theology (Ave Maria University, Florida), and the Licentiate in Sacred Theology in Thomistic Studies (Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C.), and has obtained her doctorate in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome. She is the author of “On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera 17.1 (2019):57-91 and “Grace as Participation according to St. Thomas Aquinas” New Blackfriars (2017): 689-708, among other publications.

Sr. Magdalene teaches courses on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas online, and has developed a website called Thomisticstudies.org, as well as a Youtube channel, Facebook, and Instagram pages.

Theodore House offers a wonderful venue for any residential course. The tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the Stonyhurst estate offer a peaceful setting with endless opportunities for walks. Guests will enjoy the comfortable recreational spaces and a beautifully lanscaped garden.

For more information about Theodore House, please click here.

• Arrivals from 3pm (Friday)
• Course commences with dinner at 6:30pm (Friday) and introductions at 7:30pm; lectures commence Saturday at 9:15am.
• Departures after lunch (Monday)