Background
Benedict Ashley was born on the 3rd of May, 1915 in Neodesha, Kansas, United States. Benedict was a son of Arthur Burton and Bertha Ashley. He grew up in Oklahoma in a Protestant household and originally set out to become a poet.
5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Ashley won a scholarship to the University of Chicago and received a bachelor's degree in comparative literature in 1937.
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, United States
Ashley received a doctorate in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 1941.
(With a beautiful grasp of the Dominican tradition, Benedi...)
With a beautiful grasp of the Dominican tradition, Benedict Ashley, O. P. gives us a rich historical overview of the major personalities who contributed to this school of spirituality. In a concise, informative manuscript he traces the development of the tradition and presents central elements that form and guide a Dominican spiritual director.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809135671/?tag=2022091-20
1995
(This work is designed to help all those who seek a world-...)
This work is designed to help all those who seek a world-view and value-system by which they can live their lives to find everything they are looking for in Christ and in the Church which He founded.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0818908297/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(While stressing the Catholic tradition in health care eth...)
While stressing the Catholic tradition in health care ethics, Ethics of Health Care is ecumenical, incorporating a broader Christian tradition as well as humanistic approaches, and takes as common ground for mutual understanding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. This new third edition is a response to the many developments in theology and the startlingly rapid changes in the arenas of medicine and health care over the past decade, from the dominance of managed care to increased surgery on an "outpatient" basis; from hospice care for the dying to the increasing use of drugs in the treatment of mental illness. Revised and thoroughly up-to-date, this third edition continues with its valuable teaching aids, including case studies, study questions, chapter summaries, a bibliography, and complete index.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0878403752/?tag=2022091-20
2002
(Meditations to help us pay serious attention to aspects o...)
Meditations to help us pay serious attention to aspects of Jesus' life covered in the five new mysteries of the rosary.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0818912855/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(This fourth edition of Health Care Ethics provides a cont...)
This fourth edition of Health Care Ethics provides a contemporary study of broad and major issues affecting health care and the ethics of health care from the perspective of Catholic teachings and theological investigation. It aims to help Christian, and especially Catholic, health care professionals solve concrete problems in terms of principles rooted in Scripture and tested by individual experience. Since the last edition of Health Care Ethics, there have been many changes in the fields of health care medicine and theology that have necessitated a fourth edition. Ashley and O'Rourke have revised their seminal work to address the publication of significant documents by the Church and the restructuring of the health care system.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0878406441/?tag=2022091-20
2006
(Beginning with the question "Metaphysics: Nonsense or Wis...)
Beginning with the question "Metaphysics: Nonsense or Wisdom?" Ashley moves from a critical examination of the foundations of modern science to quantum physics and the Big Bang; from Aristotle's theory of being and change, through Aquinas's five ways, to a critical analysis of modern and postmodern thought. Ashley is able to interweave the approaches of the great philosophers by demonstrating their contributions to philosophical thought in a concrete, specific manner. In the process, he accounts for a contemporary culture overwhelmed by the fragmentation of data and thirsting for an utterly transcendent yet personal God. The capstone of a remarkable career, The Way Toward Wisdom will be welcomed by students in philosophy and theology.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0268020353/?tag=2022091-20
2006
(As one of the leading Catholic thinkers of our day, Bened...)
As one of the leading Catholic thinkers of our day, Benedict Ashley collects some of his most important and influential essays tacking such issues as human personhood, the nature of metaphysics, man's ultimate end, Jesus' knowledge of the Father, John Paul II's Theology of the Body, the hierarchical structure of the Church, Humanae Vitae and much more. This is a treasure trove for those seeking sound instruction in philosophy and Theology.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1932589260/?tag=2022091-20
2006
(In How Science Enriches Theology, Ashley and Deely presen...)
In How Science Enriches Theology, Ashley and Deely present a veritably “theosemiotic picture” of the universe, and one which avoids the naïve reductionisms of mind to matter, culture to society, biology to physics, and cenoscopic to ideoscopic science. But not only do the authors of this stellar book explore the diverse riches of creation’s many nooks and crannies; they do not balk at concluding with the speculative but inevitable question, Where is creation headed?, while also providing a tentative answer to how we might reconcile the inevitable consequences of the Second Law of Thermodynamics with the Book of Revelation’s eschatological promise of a New Heavens and a New Earth.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1587313634/?tag=2022091-20
2012
(This book covers his early life, academic experience, con...)
This book covers his early life, academic experience, conversion to Catholicism, entering the Dominican Order. His career as a teacher, administrator and a consultant on philosophy, theology and ethics are detailed along with his own poetry and commentaries. This rich autobiography will be interesting to anyone who knows of the dozens of books Fr. Ashley has written and how he has made his mark on the philosophical and theological thought of the Roman Catholic Church over his long life as a Dominican Friar.
https://www.amazon.com/Barefoot-Journeying-Autobiography-Begging-Friar/dp/1623110017/?tag=2022091-20
2013
(In the midst of anti-religious sentiment, how are Christi...)
In the midst of anti-religious sentiment, how are Christians to accept the type of freedom offered by modern psychology? Renowned theologian Benedict Ashley presents a Christian view of the human person's call to true freedom. Such liberty requires not only overcoming the typical struggles of personal development, but also attaining the healing that, for some, demands the ministrations of psychotherapy. While recognizing that the profound vocation of mankind requires spiritual and ethical integration, Ashley treats the major models of human personhood found in contemporary psychology. His mediating model of the human person sets a sound philosophical foundation that serves to integrate a Christian vision of the human person and the work of psychology.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0977310388/?tag=2022091-20
2013
Benedict Ashley was born on the 3rd of May, 1915 in Neodesha, Kansas, United States. Benedict was a son of Arthur Burton and Bertha Ashley. He grew up in Oklahoma in a Protestant household and originally set out to become a poet.
Ashley won a scholarship to the University of Chicago and received a bachelor's degree in comparative literature in 1937, studying under a noted professor, Thomist and was a graduate assistant to Adler. He received a doctorate in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 1941, writing his dissertation on what he called "natural slavery," or the populace's lack of broad education and its inability as a result to make informed decisions.
During graduate school Ashley decided to become a Dominican priest. He entered the Dominican order in 1941, taking the religious name Benedict and professing his first vows in 1942. Fully ordained several years later, he was based in River Forest and became a primary part of a group of thinkers that became known as the "River Forest School of Thomism".
In 1951 Benedict helped form a group called the Albertus Magnus Lyceum. These men brought to fruition Pope Leo XIII's call to re-establish Aquinas' thinking by relearning and teaching explicitly what Aquinas meant when he said that all human knowledge comes through the senses.
Ashley taught Thomistic philosophy at the Aquinas Institute of Theology, which was based in River Forest before moving to St. Louis. He was the institute's president from 1962 to 1969; professor of philosophy from 1957 to 1969; professor of moral theology from 1969 to 1981, professor of moral theology from 1993 to 1996. From 1994 to 1996 served as professor at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary. In 1999 he was a lecturer of humanities at the University of Chicago.
During 2001-2002 he was visiting lecturer at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences and the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington D.C. In 2003 the newly formed Baton Rouge, Louisiana, based Institute for Advanced Physics appointed Ashley to be a St. Louis-based associate professor.
Until his death in 2013, Fr. Ashley was an Emeritus Professor of Moral Theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology, St. Louis and an Associate Professor at the Center for Health Care Ethics, Medical School of St. Louis University.
(As one of the leading Catholic thinkers of our day, Bened...)
2006(Beginning with the question "Metaphysics: Nonsense or Wis...)
2006(While stressing the Catholic tradition in health care eth...)
2002(In How Science Enriches Theology, Ashley and Deely presen...)
2012(In the midst of anti-religious sentiment, how are Christi...)
2013(This fourth edition of Health Care Ethics provides a cont...)
2006(This work is designed to help all those who seek a world-...)
2000(Meditations to help us pay serious attention to aspects o...)
2003(This book covers his early life, academic experience, con...)
2013(The classic study of the Christian understanding of the h...)
1985(An exhaustive presentation of Roman Catholic moral teachi...)
1996(With a beautiful grasp of the Dominican tradition, Benedi...)
1995As a young man, Ashley was a committed atheist and communist. He disagreed with some social and political aspects of the Catholic Church, but through his study under Adler of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas he was baptized in the Catholic Church in 1938.
Quotations: "When I was baptized my comrades and student friends could not understand it or thought it was a passing phase in a poet's life, and I did not try to explain".
Quotes from others about the person
"People knew Father Ashley as a moral philosopher and a moral theologian and as a priest, but they don't really know the sort of base of his life, which was to try to recover St. Thomas and re-integrate it into our thinking." - Dr. Anthony Rizzi.
"In either reading Benedict's publications or conversing with him, one has the sense that you are in the presence of, in the words that Ralph McInerny applied to him, 'a giant.'" - Mark S. Latkovic (on the occasion of Ashley's eighty-fifth birthday in 2000).