Our personal friendship
Father John, as I said, became a close friend of my entire family. He usually visited us on December 26, and we would exchange gifts. He was co-celebrant at the wedding of two of my children and very friendly to others. He was an ardent fan of the Philadelphia Phillies and Eagles (Philly was his home town), and whenever we could we took him to see a baseball game in Baltimore before Washington finally acquired the Nationals to replace the Senators. John became one of my closest friends and we collaborated on many projects together. For example, we co-authored a pamphlet “On Understanding ‘Human Sexuality’,” a pamphlet first published in Communio 4 (1977), 195-225, and published as an expanded booklet in the “Synthesis Series” of Franciscan Herald Press, 1977. This was a critique of the infamous Human Sexuality in Our Day: New Directions in American Catholic Thought, by Anthony Kosnik and others, a report to the Catholic Theological Society of America.

His great work with persons who had homosexual inclinations but wanted to live chaste lives
Father Harvey had studied psychology as well as theology at CUA and, as an apostolic priest, had been working one on one with persons who had a homosexual inclination but wanted to live chaste lives for decades. In the 70s he realized that group therapy, modeled in many ways on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, would be more helpful than one on one counseling. He thus founded COURAGE, and several ordinaries allowed him to establish Courage groups in their dioceses, among them Archbishop (later Cardinal) Hickey of Washington and John Cardinal O’Connor of New York. There are now Courage chapters in many dioceses. While he was still in the Washington area I attended several COURAGE meetings and had the privilege of giving short talks on theology to the group. After moving to De Sales University in PA, Father John had quite a schedule. He taught one or two classes at the University during the week and on Fridays would drive (even in his late 80s) to New York City to meet the COURAGE group there on Saturdays; he would spend Friday and Saturday nights in the rectory of St. Vincent de Paul Church, whose pastor, Father Jerry Miller, was most helpful. He would then drive back to De Sales to begin another week. He was constantly on the go until, near the end of 2009 he suffered a serious fall in New York while there for a COURAGE meeting, and he spent the rest of his life at a nursing home operated by the Oblates in Childs, MD, except for a trip, to be noted later, to attend the September 2010 meeting of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars in Baltimore.

Father Harvey’s theological career
For years after ordination he taught at the Oblate House of Studies in Washington until it had so few seminarians that the large house they used was sold to the Archdiocese as for the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center and they moved to small house of studies very near CUA and joined the Washington Theological Consortium with the OMI’s and Dominicans. In the late 1980’s Father Harvey moved to De Sales University (formerly known as Allentown College) operated by the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales in Center Valley, PA.

He was a great scholar and was constantly studying new developments in the understanding of and help for persons with homosexual inclinations. His many books on this subject are well known and widely used: The Homosexual Person: New Thinking in Pastoral Thought (1987), The Truth About Homosexuality: The Cry of the Faithful (1996); Same-Sex Attractiion: A Guide for Parents, ed. John F. Harvey and Gerard V.Bradley (who both contributed essays of great importance), plus scores of articles in scholarly journals on homosexuality, Catholic sexual morality, and marriage. One of his finest scholarly writings was an early 1950 essay in which he defended St. Thomas Aquinas’s teaching that there are two sets of the moral virtues, the naturally acquired and the divinely infused along with charity. This essay appeared in the proceedings of the newly founded Catholic Theological Society of America, although I forget the year. His defense of St. Thomas’s position is one of the best I have read, and this is in some ways remarkable because the great St. Francis de Sales, to whom Father Harvey was very devoted, did not agree with the Angelic Doctor and thought it unnecessary to have two sets of moral virtues.

Father Harvey, with me, was a member of the Catholic Theological Society of America during the turbulent 70’s and 80’s (I still retain my membership), and I was at several meetings of the CTSA in which there were panel discussions of homosexuality; there would usually be 3 members of the panel who argued that homosexual acts can frequently be justified and John was the token opposition. But he always stood his ground, firmly supported magisterial teaching, and showed that he was fully in command of the relevant literature.

John was one of the early members of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and received the Cardinal Wright Award for his outstanding contributions to theology many years ago. At the meeting of the Fellowship at the end of September 2010 in Baltimore, the President of the Fellowship drove Father Harvey and a companion from his nursing home in Child’s MD to the meeting so that the Fellowship could honor him by giving him the Founder’s Award, given to him because of his magnificent contributions to the Fellowship. It is so good that we were able to do this.

William E. May

IN MEMORY OF
FATHER JOHN F. HARVEY, O.S.F.S.

Father Harvey and Dumbarton College of the Holy Cross
I learned that John had done his STD in moral theology at CUA with a 1950 study, The Moral Theology of the Confessions of Saint Augustine (reprinted 2009 by Wipf and Stock, Eugene, Oregon), a work that remains very valuable. For many years from the late 40s through the 50’s John taught at the now defunct Dunbarton Oaks College operated by the Holy Cross Sisters. I have met many of the women, now in their late 70s and early 80s, whom Father taught at that college; they all remember him fondly as the best teacher they ever had and a true friend; he maintained contact with them until the end, and whenever he was in the Washington area he would visit several of them.

I first met Father Harvey during Christmas week of 1971 at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. The issue discussed was in vitro fertilization, and featured speakers were Paul Ramsey, the great Methodist Christian Ethicist from Princeton University who gave a splendid argument against IVF and other “new reproductive techniques,” and Robert Steptoe, M.D., the British doctor who with Paul Edwards was the leading scientist seeking to generate life in the laboratory. Father Harvey, at that time already a well known and respected moral theologian was there, eager to learn more about this subject. I had just begun teaching moral theology at The Catholic University of America. Father Harvey and I shared the same vehement opposition to IVF and soon became fast friends. He in fact became one of my very best friends and a friend to all my family.