THE LATE VERY REV. DR. WATTERS, S.M

New Zealand Tablet, 1 June 1916, Page 23

THE LATE VERY REV. DR. WATTERS, S.M

AN ELOQUENT AND TOUCHING TRIBUTE. (From our Wellington correspondent.) V ' • ' ■ ' " May 27. At St. Joseph’s Church, Buckle street, on last Wednesday morning a Solemn Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of the late Very Rev. Dr. Watters, S. was celebrated in the presence of a crowded con* gregation, who assembled to pay their last tribute of respect to the memory of one who had done so much for the education of the Catholic youth of this Dominion. Among those who attended were many of the first students of St. Patrick’s College, both clerical and lay, ex-students of later years, who had received their education there while he was rector, and many old friends of the deceased. The Government was represented by the Postmaster-General (Sir Joseph Ward, Bart*., K.C.M.G.), the civic authorities by his Worship the Mayor (Mr. J. P. Luke), the Education Department by Inspector Fleming, and Victoria College Council, of which body the late Dr. Watters was a prominent member, was also represented : whilst all classes of the citizens of Wellington, both Catholic and non-Catholic, were well represented. Amongst the prominent Catholic laymen were Mr. Martin Kennedy, K.S.G., Doctors T. Cahill and P. Mackin. His Grace Archbishop Redwood presided in the sanctuary. The Solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated by the Very Rev. Father O’Connell, S.M. (1890), the Rev, Father Kimbell, S.M. (1886), being deacon, the Rev. Father Fay, S.M. (1888), subdeacon, all -students of the college in the years named. Amongst the clergy present were the Right Rev. Mgr. McKenna, V.G., Ven. Archdeacon Devoy, S.M. (one of the late rector’s colleagues when the college was first opened), Very Rev, Dean Smyth, S.M. (Provincial), Very Rev. Dean Power (Hawera), Very Rev. Dr. Kennedy, S.M., Very Rev. Father Keogh, S.M., Very Rev. Dean Lane (Lr. Hutt), Rev. Fathers Hurley, S.M., Adm., Smyth, S.M., Adm, Peoples, S.M., O’Connor, S.M., Devoy, S.M. O'Reilly, S.M., Gilbert, S.M., Schaefer, S.M., Gondringer, S.M., O’Farrell, S.M., Ryan, S.M., J. Cullen, S.M., A. Cullen, S.M., Venning, S.M., O’Leary, S.M., Daly (Upper Hutt), Quealy (Petone), T. McKenna (Pahiatua), O’Sullivan, S.M. (Napier), Hickson, S.M. (Meeanee), W. Goggan, S.M. (another of the pioneers who were associated with Dr. Watters in opening the college), Dignan (Napier), Walsh (Lower Hutt), two of the Redemptorist Fathers, and representatives from the Marist Brothers; Sisters of Mercy, and Compassion. The music of the Mass was beautifully chanted by the college choir, with Master Gordon O’Meeghan at the organ. FATHER MAHONEY’S PANEGYRIC. The Rev. Father S. Mahoney, S.M., of Wanganui, one of the first pupils of the college (1885),, delivered the following eloquent and touching panegyric of the first rector of St. Patrick’s College, based on the text:— Blesssed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; for their works follow them/ (Apoc. xiv., 13.)

We are here (said the rev. preacher) to mourn the loss, and pray for the soul of one, who will be long remembered, not only by those who have been in any way associated with the earliest history of St. Patrick’s College, but by all who have had any dealings with him.

His name • will be for all ■ time connected with' the foundation of Catholic secondary education in this Dominion. I can imagine your feelings, when, some days ago you were perusing the account of the unfortunate rebellion in Dublin, you saw among the names of the victims Father, or as we were wont - to know him, Dr. Watters. He was standing at the door of his college, so the press informed us, when he was stricken down—accidentally or otherwise, I cannot tell. Knowing him as the true patriot that he was, we may well believe that as he stood there he was indignant, and his heart bled at the sight of the . destruction and murder that was being perpetrated in the city," that he loved so well, by some of his misguided countrymen who had been made dupes, by crafty and unscrupulous enemies of Ireland. He was shot, and died of his wounds God rest his soul. You had known him; you knew his labors here in years gone by you knew his work and his worth. He is dead, but his , memory shall live. Dr. Watters was born in Dundalk oh February 8, 1851. He imbibed from his very infancy the principles of our holy religion ; he grew up in an atmosphere of faith. To consecrate himself to the service of God in the ecclesiastical state had been his most cherished desire from his earliest youth. He-grew up faithful with this strong desire, and never abandoned it. Solely devoted to the inspirations of true zeal, he looked in his future career for labors useful to the glory of God and the salvation of souls. He was destined to encounter ' them. His first studies were made under the Marist Fathers in Dundalk, and, being a youth of more than ordinary ability, his professors predicted great things in the future, and their expectations were amply realised. Young Watters felt that such a life, as his self-sacrificing teachers were leading, would quite fulfil his most cherished wish, and his classical studies being completed, on the advice of his spiritual director he entered the novitiate of the Marist Fathers. Here for twelve months by prayer and meditation, he implored Divine guidance as, to the all-important step in lifethe choice of a vocation. Here he cultivated those virtues which were to he his. safeguard in the life-work before him. On the 23rd August, 1872, he was professed, and became a member of the Society of Mary. The choice of a state of life with the . greater part of mankind is a path taken at random, and followed blindly. In the whirlwind which seizes on'youth, and carries them headlong, very few .deliberate beforehand, propose to themselves an object, fix upon it with prudence, that they majr strive for it with energy. They go along foolishly in life, floating at the mercy of circumstances, and they do not reflect that we have, each of us, in the designs of God, a vocation, a way prepared and certain, outside of which we are exposed to the risk of a horrible shipwreck. But who amongst us thinks of living in order to fulfil the Divine vocation? Who thinks of searching, in thoughtfulness of reason and the directions of faith, God’s purposes for him on this earth ? Through this deplorable forgetfulness how many wandering hearts, how many evils are inflicted on the world He who enters the religious state makes no such blind choice. For long months he weighs the matter before God, and he has skilled advisers to direct him, as to the important step he is to take.

Called to the religious and priestly state, Dr. Watters adopted its .virtues and developed them to the end of his career. Obedience is the foundation of the whole religious life. Dr. Watters; obedient to the command of his superiors, left his home, his relatives, and

friends,. the good Old Land he loved so well, andy johrneyed to this end of the world to undertake the new work he was called upon to do. Obediently he labored for, 14 years as first rector of St. Patrick’s College, and at the call of his superiors, returned to take up similar duties in Dublin, where ,he met with so sad and untimely an endfor apparently many years of usefulness in the cause of education still lay before him. In 1874, August 26, he was raised to the sublime dignity of the priesthood. He was ordained by Archbisfiop Redwood, who had but a few months before been raised to the Episcopate. It was Dr. Redwood’s first ordination. I need not try to picture his priestly life during those 42 years, as morning after morning he offered up the Holy Sacrifice. ‘I will go to the altar of God.’ Ah, what strength and comfort he derived therefrom to carry on for so many years his scholastic labors’so successfully.. From the time he was ordained until he was called upon to enter on the ..work in which wo especially knew him, he was a 'professor in the Catholic University " School, ,'Leeson street, Dublin. .So that he began and ended his teaching career in the same institution. After long consideration his Grace Archbishop, then Bishop Redwood, decided that the time was ripe to establish a means of higher Catholic education for. the youth of this young land, and with the co-operation and encouragement of his priests, and the generosity of the laity, of the Colony, fie was enabled to build and equip St. Patrick’s College. But the choice of the first superior was the all-important matter. Dr. Redwood conferred with the first superiors of the Marist Order as to the one who should be chosen to begin and carry on this new and difficult work. Dr. Watters was appointed the first rector, and with Fathers Carolan and W. Goggan, opened the college in June, 1885. Father Devoy, who had been collecting the funds to pay for the building, was added to the staff to look after the . business concerns. Opening in the middle of the year, as they did, the numbers were not promising, but the following year, when the college was formally opened by his Eminence Cardinal Moran, there were 130 students, an average practically maintained ever since. From thence for 14 years the names of Dr. Watters and St. Patrick’s College were synonymous. It would not have been easy to find a man better fitted to tide over the early difficulties of such an undertaking ; one who would be more tactful in shaping and cultivating the raw material that the first rector was given to work upon. But he was not one who was easily discouraged, and, counting 110 effort’ too great for the noble cause he had espoused, relying on God’s help and our Lady’s protection, he put a whole-souled energy into his work, and with what gratifying results, the history of St. Patrick’s bears abundant witness. Pupils who passed through St. Patrick’s College during those early years cannot think of their college days, the work, their sorrows their struggles, their victories, without picturing Dr. Watters, whose whole heart and soul were in the welfare of Iris pupils. It was indeed no easy task that he had been called to this country to carry outto start New Zealand’s first Catholic college. But by his indomitable courage he overcame all initial difficulties, and the college was still an infant, when it began to more than realise the aims and great hopes of its founders; ‘ Hie lapis, mole parvus, spe gi-andis.’ Dr. Redwood had inscribed on the foundation-stone: This stone, small in size, big with hope ; and the hope was soon fulfilled. For 14 years the first rector’s energies and talents were cheerfully given to the students of St. Patrick’s. How well he did the work he had been sent to do, how St. Patrick’s came .to be a power to be reckoned with, is well known to all who have followed the progress of the college. He was a. rinlished gentleman, a cultured English and classical scholar, a good and faithful religious Marist, an earnest and exemplary priest. He loved the ceremonies of the Church, and often from this pulpit he gave forth polished and learned discourses.

, But the life-work appointed for Dr. Watters by his superiors, and cheerfully and enthusiastically entered on by him, was the higher education of Catholic youth. To educate a man as a man not merely to train the physical. portion of man to a high degree of perfection, not to take into account merely his body but his soul, not only, his present but his future, not only, his temporal end but his eternal destiny—is the. nature of the education the Catholic Church demands for her children, and such was the training Dr. Watters expended his every energy to impart. This is the everlasting conflict between the world and the Church: and as the peculiar battle-ground of these claims is the human intellect, it is no wonder that now, as in every stage of the Church’s progress, when she had ceased to battle for. bare existence, the question of education has come to the ■ front, to take its place, as the most important subject that can engage the attention of her children; For we know that the young soul, that is to be educated for social ends, has not only a social end but an individual end that is eternal; and we are solicitous that his social training shall be such that it shall not interfere with—that it shall, on the contrary, promote his training for heaven and this because we know, with a knowledge that is as deep as the faith from which it springs, that it would be ill for a youth, even though he were fashioned into a ‘ perfectly educated gentleman,’ to lose, nay, even to risk, his salvation in the process. Because we know also, that if it were needs a question of choice between intellectual culture and eternal salvation, the only wise thing to do would be to choose the latter ; but also, because we know that the two are not incompatible!, nay, are mutually helpful; and that even humanly speaking, the man is best educated who has been educated most religiously. The - students who passed under Dr. Watters received this solid religious training. ‘ Si monumentn quaeris, circumspi.ee.’ If you want to see the evidence of his work, look around you. His pupils are holding responsible positions in every walk of life. Of those who -'were numbered among thfe students of his day, 25 have joined the ranks of the priesthood. One of the first to enter the college is now among the first of the hierarchy— his Grace Coadjutor Archbishop O’Shea. Many others are here present,. and the success of all is known to most of you./ Numbers are doing honor to their training in the legal, medical, mercantile, and other professions, and all, I am sure, look back with gratitude to Dr. Watters’ kindly direction, and to-day sorrow at his loss. Of his end I know only that the papers afforded the information, that he died of his wounds. This would convey to the Catholic and the priest the consoling news, that he was doubtless fortified for the last dread journey with the holy Sacraments, and comforted by his loving confreres, and so we may earnestly trust that he was of the number of whom the Scripture says— ‘ Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ... that they may rest from their labors; for their works follow them.’ But even after such a life spent in tlje training of God’s children, there may remain some slight obstacle to his receiving at once the reward of his labors, let me remind you that it is a holy and. wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins.’ Many will, out of gratitude, supplicate heaven in his behalf, and charity will appeal to all to pray for the soul of a faithful and devoted priest. The holiness of the God of infinite Purity requires the separation from Him for a time of souls, holy as- they are, in whom there is found the slightest stain of sin. In kingdom- nothing defiled is to be found and if after death, when He Who judges justices will examine whether each soul that appears before Him is fit for admittance into heaven, He discovers in anyone the least stain, though He pronounces upon it the blessing of being one day received into that home of perfect happiness, He allows to that soul, what it wishes itself, that that stain would be utterly effaced, before it is admitted to the enjoyment of its glory. You will then pray earnestly this morning, and unite with the priest jn offering the Adorable Sacrifice for

the repose of the'soul of Felix Joseph Watters, that if he be not yet in the enjoyment of the reward of his labors, our efforts may shorten the time of his purgation. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. V , At the conclusion of the Mass the organist played the ‘ Dead March’ from ‘Saul,’ the congregation standing.