Thank you, Denise, for writing this great obituary and sharing your personal memories. (please see the bottom of this entry for a correction about feeneyism)
Prayers and Masses Needed for
Repose of Soul of Fr. James F. Wathen
HAPPY BIRTHDAY FR. WATHEN
AND MAY YOU FIND REPOSE
by Denise M. Trias
November 7, 2006
EVANSVILLE, INDIANA- Fr. James Francis Wathen died of kidney failure at 4:55
this Tuesday morning after losing consciousness for three hours. Yesterday,
November 6th he celebrated his 74th birthday.
The last few years he battled lymphatic cancer, first trying holistic
treatments and then going on to radiation. A few weeks ago he had an allergic reaction to one of the treatments after it was found that he had some new tumors. My sister called me from Pennsylvania on Friday, October 27th after she had heard from her priest that Fr. Wathen was in his last agony. Calling Fr. Wathen, who had been a long time acquaintance of mine, he confirmed that he had been in the hospital but that he was pulling out of the scare just fine. Fr. Wathen was in very good spirits, told me he had high hopes of recovery and gave me what was to be the last bit of advice in my own personal situation.
Some years back when Fr. Wathen stopped flying into the Boston area to say Mass, I remember whispering a little prayer to God about this priest who had said such a reverent Mass, a dry sense of humor, a love for souls, a hatred for the ruinous theories in the modern godless schools, a great devotion to the true Faith and Mass and such a pastoral care for those who were blessed by his friendship: “Dear Lord, please let me see Father again before he dies someday.”
Little did I realize that God would take my prayer so literally. This spring I received a phone call from my brother Paul who lives in Washington State whom I haven’t seen for nine years. He was coming o Owensboro, Kentucky for work for two weeks. I knew that that is where Fr. Wathen was from and only an hour from his present residence of Evansville, Indiana. So, I boarded a plane and on a sunny afternoon I arrived in Evansville on May 24th and drove through the city, along the river to Fr. Wathen’s little apartment on the second floor overlooking the river where I was able to visit with him for two hours before he went off to a
doctor’s appointment. He was well cared for by the women from his church who came to his home and made his meals. His leg was swollen at the time from a bad reaction to the dye used in cat scans but other than that he looked healthy and happy.
The next day my brother Paul and I took a tour of Owensboro and found the high school where Fr. Wathen had taught prior to the introduction of the Novus Ordo Missae. We then had dinner at The Moonlight Bar-B-Q (http://www.moonlite.com/), a famous Inn in the town. As we were leaving the restaurant I mentioned in passing to the hostess that I was visiting a friend who used to teach in Owensboro, Fr. Wathen. ”Fr. Wathen? That was my teacher,” she said. And so he was.
I was able to see Fr. Wathen one last time the next day when I got caught in the middle of a storm with three twisters and headed back to Evansville for safety out of the Owensboro area where I couldn’t get back to see my brother one last time because the roads were closed. I told Fr. Wathen how I had prayed to see him before his death so I figured his time was near. He laughed and assured me that he was going to get better. ”We will see,” I said.
Fr. Wathen was one of the rare Catholic priests in the United States who never said the Novus Ordo Missae. He was born and raised in Owensboro,Kentucky, the fifth of ten children. He studied philosophy at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, MD and theology at St. Maur’s Seminary in South Union, Kentucky, where he graduated in 1958. He served as a diocesan priest in Owensboro, Kentucky as a high school teacher and pastor until 1970 when after reading “Questioning the Validity of the Masses Using the New, All-English Canon” by P. H. Omlor, Athanasius Press (See also http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2002Feb/tgs20.htm ), he
discerned that the Novus Ordo was not only a liturgy that conveyed a total departure from the Catholic Faith, but was a Great Sacrilege. To attend the Novus Ordo was in total defiance of the 1st Commandment of God to worship Him Alone because the Novus Ordo was not the true worship due to God but instead a mockery and false imitation of it. (See “The Great Sacrilege” by Fr. James F. Wathen, Tan Books and Publishers Inc.) When asked why the faithful failed to grasp this concept, Fr. Wathen used to always reply “Because the people do not realize how evil is the Novus Ordo”.
Fr. Wathen was of the firm belief that the Novus Ordo Missae was the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy about the “abomination of desolation”: ”When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand.” (St. Matthew 24:15)
I first made my acquaintance with Fr. Wathen in 1997 when I read his book “The Great Sacrilege.” I wrote him a letter detailing all of my questions and was happily surprised to receive a phone call in reply to my letter. Father said he was coming to Boston that month to say Mass in Sharon, MA and said he would make time to come and see me in person and answer my questions. Living in Quincy, MA with my family, he made good on his word and not only came to our home personally and answered all of my questions but took also the time to hear my general confession. Such was the pastoral care that I learned over time that Fr. Wathen took for all souls God placed in his path. He flew all over the United States to offer the Traditional Latin Mass which he said was our birthright as Catholics based on the Papal Encyclical by Pope St. Pius V, “Quo Primum”.
Father Wathen was accused by some of being a racist because of comments he
made in his book “Who Shall Ascend”. [Note from Corinne: This book also seemed to me to be aggressively feeneyite, i.e. denying baptism of blood and baptism of desire. Read with caution.] Those of us who knew him knew that souls came
first to Fr. Wathen, whatever the color. Any ideas other than that he had about race were easily stocked up to his biased southern upbringing and cultural values and had nothing to do with the teachings of the Catholic Faith.
For awhile Fr. Wathen was on a radio show in the Boston area which gave many people exposure to the errors of the Novus Ordo and the Masonic errors found in the modernist version of the ”Catechism of The Catholic Church.” Fr. Wathen was a member of the Order of St. John, which in the early 1970’s he came to believe was the only canonical answer to legally say the traditional Latin Mass. As the years went on though, Fr. Wathen modified his views and came to believe that Catholics could receive the traditional Sacraments from any priest properly ordained in the traditional Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Some people accused the O.S.J. of being masonic and in defense of his order, Fr. Wathen wrote the book “Is the Order of St. John Masonic” (Tan Books). He had a few banterings with Fr. Anthony Cekada over the Order of St. John which you may read in “Light on the O.S.J.” by Fr. Cekada and “More Light on the O.S.J.” by Fr. James Wathen. I found these two works very hard to follow personally, and in the end concluded that it really didn’t matter whether the O.S.J. was a legitimate Catholic Order or not because Fr. Wathen was a truly ordained diocesan priest prior to Vatican II and because of “Quo Primum” had every right to say the traditional Mass as every other Catholic priest I knew in his same situation.
Fr. Wathen was not a sedevacantist, a position I personally came to embrace in my later years as a traditional Catholic. Father Wathen was known to hold the view that canon law stated that we can’t judge the Pope, while sedevacantists such as Bishop Robert McKenna would tell lay people that this is not an issue of judging a Pope. Instead, the man in Rome isn’t even Pope or can’t even possibly be Pope because he is putting out a false liturgy, false sacraments and catechisms and canon law full of error. Because of Papal Infallibility there is no way possible that these men in Rome can be Popes. In other words, there is no Pope to be judged.
Sedevacantist arguments can be found at http://www.cmri.org/ and http://www.traditionalmass.org/ as well as in these two books that describe how Vatican II was hijacked by a modernist “robber council”: “Tumultuous Times” by Frs. Francisco and Dominic Radecki ( http://www.miqcenter.com/books/1-tumultuous.shtml ) and “The Robber Church” by Patrick Henry Omlor (http://www.miqcenter.com/books/0-problems.shtml ).
You may read Fr. Wathen’s defense against sedevacantism in his book “Who
Shall Ascend?” which describes his view of what has happened during and since the Vatican II council.
We thank Fr. Wathen for his great example of holding onto what was rightfully ours and what was wrongfully stolen from us as Catholics under the excuse and lie of “updating” the church- the ancient traditional liturgy of the western rite.
May God bless You Fr. Wathen and May He Deliver You Into Eternal Happiness.
For more information on defense of the Mass the following books are highly recommended:
OTTAVIANI INTERVENTION
Ottaviani, Bacci.
THE PERMANENT INSTRUCTION OF THE ALTA VENDITA
Vennari.
PROBLEMS WITH THE NEW MASS
Coomaraswamy.
PROBLEMS WITH THE NEW SACRAMENTS
Coomaraswamy.
PROBLEMS WITH THE PRAYERS OF THE MODERN MASS
Cekada.
WELCOME TO THE TRADITIONAL LATIN MASS
Fr. A. Cekada.
TRADITIONALISTS, INFALLIBILITY AND THE POPES
Cekada.
Denise later sent out this correction because of Father Wathen’s Feeney error; I chose not to include the exchange between her and a cleric that she mentions:
Dear Friends,
I sent out some links and an article last week about Fr. James
Wathen’s death and his defense of the Mass.
It has been brought to my attention (exchange below between a
cleric and myself) that some Traditional Catholics have been
scandalized by any praise I have given Fr. Wathen without
mentioning his denial of the Church’s teaching of Baptism of Desire
and Blood (Feeney error) nor his proper understanding of the
Magesterium.
I apologize for any scandal I may have caused.
I certainly do not advocate nor follow the Feeney error
myself as many of you have read my former defense on
the matter. At the same time though I had been
taken and confused by the error myself for awhile when I was
first a traditional Catholic and can see how easily others are being
that Fr. Feeney held such a defense against the modernist errors
of his days (but over-reactic though by denying the Church’s
teaching on Baptism of Blood and Desire).
I only wanted to give Fr. Wathen credit where credit was due-
by his great defense of the Tridentine Mass and his total
recognition of the abomination of the novus ordo
put upon unsuspecting Catholics by the modernists,
freemasons and communists who had infiltrated our
precious Catholic sanctuaries.
Though it is true that it is no small matter to deny
any teaching of the Church. But, at the same
time I do not want to put myself in a place where
I judge how culpable Fr. Wathen was on the matter
but it is true that he embraced the error and taught
it after his meeting with Brother Francis of St. Benedict
Center in Richmond, NH over a decade ago.
The Churches teaching on Baptism of Desire and Blood
is greatly defended and properly explained by St. Alphonsus
Ligori and St. Thomas Aquinas and I point my readers
to them if they need to be corrected, informed or clarified
on the matter of the Feeney error.
St. Alphonsus
http://www.cmri.org/02-baptism_blood-desire_stalph.html
St. Thomas found in the Summa
http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/home.html
See also Fr. Cekada’s articles on Feeneyism
http://www.traditionalmass.org/articles/
As for the proper understanding of the magesterium issue
you may find articles and defense about that
both at http://www.cmri.org/ and http://www.traditionalmass.org.
The books I recommended in my article on Fr. Wathen-
Tumultuous Times and The Robber Church, cover
that issue as well.
I did not write the opening
paragraph to the article on Fr. Wathen that was published
by Daily Catholic which said that Our Lord took
Fr. Wathen home. That was written by the editor Michael Cain.
I would not have been so enthusiastic if I had been the editor
as I didn’t agree with Fr. Wathen’s errors on the Feeney
issue and a simple plea for prayers for his souls as the priest
pointed out to me is all was needed and also because
I don’t believe any of us should be so confident
that any one is in heaven or hell no matter how Catholic
or unCatholic may seem as we do not know how a person
ends their last moment in death, nor have a right to judge
their soul.
But, we may recognize and point out error to others.
The tricky part always of course is humbling ourselves
and making sure we are correct, or that it is even
our place in that circumstance or we have the authority
in that instance to be or before doing so.
Godbless and please keep Father in your prayers.
In JMJ,
Denise M. T.