Fr. Innocent Smith explores how beauty in art, architecture, and liturgy forms the soul, elevates worship, and points to God, showing that the Church’s cultivation of beauty is essential for evangelization, spiritual maturity, and experiencing the divine.

This lecture was given on October 6th, 2025, at University of Virginia.

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About the speaker:

Innocent Smith, O.P., is Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. After undergraduate studies in music and philosophy at Notre Dame, he entered the Order of Preachers in 2008 and was ordained priest in 2015. Fr. Innocent served in parish ministry for several years before completing a doctorate in liturgical studies at the University of Regensburg in 2021. After teaching for several years in Baltimore and Washington, DC, he joined the Department of Theology in 2025. His research focuses on the material and musical aspects of medieval liturgical books as well as the relationship between liturgy and theology. His monograph Bible Missals and the Medieval Dominican Liturgy explores medieval manuscripts of the Bible that also contain liturgical texts for the celebration of Mass.

Keywords: Beauty, Evangelization, Eucharistic Worship, Goodness Truth And Beauty, Incarnation, Liturgical Architecture, Liturgical Diversity, Religious Art History, Sacred Music, Virtue Of Religion

The Way of Beauty: The Church and the Arts – Fr. Innocent Smith, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute