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When Babu Gogineni invited me to write a few words about the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, I could not have been more delighted. This is a good news story, and if someone in a different setting should attempt to emulate this work, I would be most pleased. He had just learned that I will be retiring in the next fifteen months, and wanted my thoughts after nearly thirty years on the job.

Generally, we are not supposed to talk about ourselves, but I’m going to because the context requires it. But let me state at the outset that this was never a one person feat – a community was behind me from the first years, warm and loyal friends, appreciative students, and eventually Harvard teachers and alumni by the dozens – constantly encouraging and ready to help.

It all began at a major junction in my life. I had recently resigned from the Catholic priesthood, the last five years of which had been full of doubt and self- examination, and a profound reappraisal of life and its meaning. I had ‘parachuted’ into the American Ethical Union, where I found safe haven until I could begin my life anew. Many of its members became lifelong friends. I had been a Chaplain at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and at Boston State College during the wild sixties. I now felt rested and ready to try my hand at Harvard University, no longer as a Catholic advisor, but as a Humanist.

Corliss Lamont, the author of The Philosophy of Humanism, and a member of Harvard’s class of 1924, lent me his considerable prestige, some sound advice, and financial support. I knocked on Harvard’s door, or, more precisely, applied for membership in the chaplains’ corps at Harvard, the United Ministry. Perhaps because its president that year was a Jesuit priest who knew of me, perhaps because my Ethical Society credentials won respect and keen interest, I was admitted by the fall of 1975.

The ensuing years were no smooth upward climb. There seemed never to be enough money, enough response from students, enough publicity, but in all three cases, the barest sufficiency to establish a firm foundation. How proud I was to get B.F. Skinner, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Father Robert Drinan among the early speakers at the Humanist Forum. I felt more honoured when students would knock on my office door, on the third floor of Phillips Brooks House, and want to talk.

Harvard University is a most appropriate place to establish a Humanist beachhead. It is a great seat of learning, and a moral player on the world stage. Despite the temptations to power and prestige, it honestly serves the common good of all humanity; take for example, its work on AIDS and its sponsorship of stem cell research. But the United Ministry must seem a curious context for a firm Humanist to ply his talents. I remember Corliss Lamont warning me never to call myself ‘a minister’. Here I was, a thorough secular agnostic, dealing on an equal level, and in mutual respect, with clergy from almost all the denominations. That was because all of us put students first, no matter what their faith or lack of it, and because our collaboration was on the level of practicality, on the issues everyone was facing as we sought workable solutions. Sometimes the issue was students and the draft, sometimes racial prejudice, sometimes sexual orientation, sometimes the harsh and impersonal nature of a highly competitive school. We were (and are) a team of dedicated professionals determined to help if asked and if able. And our collegiality was a boon to us all – I will never forget the cheerful presence and wise counsel of the Presbyterian Chaplain, Larry Hill, whose friendship towards me was heartfelt, and whose social conscience remains unsurpassed since his early death.

Nevertheless, no one for a moment forgot that an unbeliever was in their midst. The group as a whole never assumes that we are all theists, that the supernatural is real for every one of us, or that faith trumps reason in the minds of all of us. We are all acquainted with Modernity, (and with Postmodernity, too) and therefore keep our focus on the welfare of this University community.

I’m sitting in my small book-filled office, beneath that beautiful photograph of the Earth as seen from the surface of the Moon, here in the heart of Harvard Yard, the Memorial Church. To some it may seem idyllic, to others a contradiction. But to me, it’s a terribly useful place for a naturalistic philosopher, if I can be so bold, to contend with a pluralistic, harried world, armed mainly with a Humanistic ethic – balancing the two great goods, that of the individual and of all humanity. The telephone rings, or there’s a knock on the door, and abstractions fade; a personal relation absorbs maximum attention.

On that level, the real level, fallible thinking, tenuous virtue, plain human frailty, achieve middling effects, the best that can be done, and no more. That’s what it means to be acquainted with ambiguity. It reminds me of Santayana’s great sentence: ‘There is only one world, the natural, and only one truth about it; but this world has a spiritual life in it which looks not to another world but to the beauty and perfection that this world suggests, approaches, and misses.’

I’ve implied a certain predilection for Pragmatism, but in the area of money I am considered a bumbling student. However, I am lucky. In the eighties, a Harvard alumnus of the class of 1932, Alexander Lincoln, Jr., left the Chaplaincy several thousand dollars in his will, and we have an annual lecture in his name. He gave us the boost to formally incorporate, with a board of directors, and a business-like demeanor. We raised more funds, and sought publicity. An article about this work was published in the Harvard Gazette and interest was aroused. One reader, already a major donor to the University, became intrigued and invited me to New York for a visit. His name was John Loeb, 24, a classmate of my long time friend, Corliss Lamont, who had been mentioned in the article. Now, this is not the ‘old boy network’ idea. The two men were ideological opposites. Lamont was a radical thinker, a civil rights advocate, a thorough leftist and good friend of Fidel Castro. Loeb, who was a Park Avenue banker and friend of American presidents, had seen his Cuban sugar fields confiscated by Castro. The two men had not spoken in years. On reading the Gazette, John called Corliss, they chatted like old buddies, and some months later, embraced one another at their 70th Harvard reunion at a luncheon in Phillips Brooks House. In that same period, Mr. Loeb presented the Chaplaincy with a modest endowment which Harvard will oversee, thus firmly linking the Chaplaincy with the University for generations to come.

Accompanying me down through the years has been the Humanist Association of Massachusetts, founded in 1978. Its members are free-thinking, socially concerned citizens of the greater Boston area, and from every level of society. They number 150 and along with an associate group of 100 hold their meetings here at Harvard, thus sharing in this learning environment. My best friends are in their ranks.

Working with students has been my greatest satisfaction, and that’s particularly evident when I perform the weddings of some. I’m pleased to report that one of the early students is now a lawyer on our Board of Directors. A present student, about to graduate from the Law School, has been a consistent campus leader from his first day as a freshman seven years ago. The picture is not totally perfect, of course. Many come and go; one, for instance, has become a Buddhist priest. But a thriving organization has emerged, the Harvard Secular Society, whose mailing list is in the hundreds. Its present president is a brilliant young woman studying neuroscience. I have learned so much from all of them.

This Chaplaincy has a long life ahead. It will not be weak or timid, nor will it be grandiose or dominating. It will serve the Harvard Community, with a sharing spirit, and always remain true to its roots: the empirical and compassionate ideals of Humanism.

The last thing Cardinal Cushing told me in 1969 as I bid goodbye to the Priesthood was, “Tom, realize they don’t love you out there, here they do.” That was true only at the beginning. Bertrand Russell, the wisest of Humanists, gave Kindness the highest rank among the virtues. In my experience, in the giving and the taking that is our lives, I would enthusiastically agree. It is present in Humanism.

And if Kindness is first, the Pursuit of Knowledge is a very close second.