The Story of Fr. George Kathrein - SSPX Interview Series

[Music] thank you for listening to the sspx podcast and our next installment of the sspx interview series today we're happy to have father alfonsus maria join us to talk about a less well-known priest who deserves much more attention here in the 21st century father george catherine father alfonsus felt so strongly that catholics today needed to know more about this australian redemptorist that he wrote a biography the story of father george catherine which has been published by angelus press his story is the story of the early days of the crisis in the church his story mirrors that of the society of saint pius the tenth founder archbishop marcel beff and as bishop bernard fellais wrote in the forward to this book about father catherine quote suddenly the normal actions the normal life turns into heroism this example should give us joy and courage for our times let's join father alfonse's maria now to learn more about this quiet heroic priest so father you just wrote a biography on the story of father george catherine um do you want to tell us a little bit about who was father catherine father kathryn george catherine he was born in 1898 and he died in 1989. so he was born in austria in a little village in the austrian tear roll uh up in the high up in the alps the village of fists his family very pious catholics they were influenced by the redemptorist fathers from innsbruck actually and one little story was that mrs catherine the mother of the family before she was married she was getting getting on in years she was approaching 30 and wondering what was going to happen if she was going to get married or not so there was a redemptive priest up there preaching a parish mission and she approached the priest and said father you know what should i do in terms of marriage and he said you will be approached by three men asking your hand in marriage take the third and that is how she became mrs catherine so the the family had to move to chicago in 1903 when little father catherine was only five years old and they settled in the redemptorist parish of old saint michaels in old town chicago and they had numerous relatives that moved there before them they had numerous cousins etc in this in the same parish so they grew up this redemptorist parish it was chicago was very it was a bad city at the time actually a lot of murders happening etc and yet the children they always stay close as they said they stayed close to god to their family and to their parish school and out of the the the it was a family of nine children two of the children died in childhood back in austria of the seven children who came into adulthood the five of them became religious three of them became redemptive particularly uh there were five religious and the other two brothers the only others who did not become religious they both married the same woman and to find out how that happened you have to read the biography so father catherine when he was a young man he realized that he had a vocation he was told that he should try the redemptress because he had grown up among redemptors etc although he was actually a marianist brother who told him that he had he should try the redemptionists and so he the the biography it goes through his life and i look at the at his life through this lens of of his vocation how did god start this vocation you the seed of this vocation how did that seed grow how did his vocation continue and pre and how did it how did it um uh change over the years and so we we started off looking at his family because his parents were very pious people they were third order franciscans can always consistent about their prayers about a spirit of faith in the family faithful to their daily rosary etc it's how five of the children ended up with religious vocations and then father catherine he followed this grace of god through all these years through his navishit after his ordination he became a professor in the redemptorist seminary for a pre-seminary for a number of years he later became a parish priest also in coeur d'alene idaho and and various places he uh in california also it was in whittier that's near los angeles fresno and oakland now when the crisis in the church came in the 1960s he had cooperated with god's grace in this vocation for so many years that he never said the new sort of mass he was always faithful to the tridentine mass so he realized that something radically wrong was going on in the church he had some clout in the province because he had been the consultant to the provincial of oakland and so basically what the redemptorist said is you don't tell us what you're doing on the weekends and we won't ask you so he that's how he managed to get away with saying the traditional mass and he helped out the society of saint pius the 10th from 1975 so that was when father post came to california until father catherine died in 1989 and most of the society chapels in northern california go back to father catherine he either stirred them himself or he influenced it uh so for example carmichael california st michaels in sacramento saint michael's in bakersfield then there was also a walnut creek california which has been defunct for many many years those chapels were all basically started by father catherine and then he also went to south lake tahoe which is now carson city nevada and also campbell california which is now los gatos california so he helped out the society every week and all these years uh supporting the work of archbishop lafave and we've been given 18 letters by a lady who wishes to remain anonymous uh but she saved these 18 letters that father catherine had written back in the 1970s to various members of her family and in each letter he goes through one by one these different aspects of the crisis in the church whether it's with regards to the sort of mass or the obligation of attending the noah's romance or of the why why it's okay to attend the traditional mass it can be with regards to the uh supply jurisdiction for marriages and confessions for traditional priests etc each one of these letters he's outlining a whole theology because he was an intellectual so he outlines this whole theology of the crisis and when you take what father catherine wrote and set it next to what archbishop lefevre and you just see you their thinking was identical which is really beautiful to see this that you know this identical way of thinking about the crisis in the church and father catherine always had a very great respect and admiration for archbishop lefeve he was always faithful to these even though he remained he lived in his redemptious house until he died still he he helped out the society until he died he was always faithful to the archbishop and to the society so his his vocation did change then in those last 20 years of his life from 1969 until 1989 i can also mention that the uh post falls also post falls in a certain way owes its origin to father catherine because while everyone knows about father debosher debesher of course nevertheless before father debosher up there in post falls it was father catherine in coeur d'alene idaho because uh father post explains this in one of his writings he says that back in 68 that was even before the novus ordo came out father catherine was saying the latin mass on a side altar in st thomas church that was the redemptorist church in coeur d'alene and there were more people going to his latin mass on the side altar that there we're going to the the english translation at that time it wasn't the novel sort it was still sort of one of those uh uh normative forms that was going towards the novus ordo and it was from there the the redemptorist superior said oh you know we can't handle this so we're going to just ship you off to oakland california which was good for the rest of us who ended up knowing him in california of course and how he touched everyone in california but it was after father catherine left from coeur d'alene those faithful there then found father devos share and that was the beginning of immaculate conception church in post falls it actually in that sense it does go back to father catherine even so he had a lot to do with the traditionalist movement on the west coast he died a very holy death april the 3rd of 1989 uh it was that year it was the feast of the annunciation of our lady because because of the when easter fell uh the annunciation had to be transferred to the 3rd of of april saint alphonsus our founder actually says that we should all hope to die on a saturday or a feast day a dedicated dedicated to our lady uh as a sign of our love and devotion to to the blessed virgin and of course you know francis died on wednesday but um father catherine died on on the feast of the annunciation to which he had a very great devotion he had a very great devotion to the mystery of the incarnation he loved christmas redemptors actually always celebrate the 25th of every month as little christmas that actually comes from the carmelites in fact the saint alphonsus took on also so every 25th of the month we have special devotions the little the the statue of the infant in the in the crib is put out on the altar and there's uh certain devotions written by saint alphonse that are done each 25th of the month and then in the evening after after the after the meal then there's there's christmas carols that are sung each 25th so father catherine had kept this this great love for the infant jesus for the mystery of the incarnation all his life long and it was appropriate that he died on the feast of the annunciation that a great feast of our lady the father kathryn he many people who still remember him uh you either 50 or people would be in their 50s or more by now because he's been gone 34 years uh father catherine people still remember him they oftentimes refer to him as the holy father kathryn uh he had a reputation for sanctity he was he was very edifying his whole life every um people often associate him with uh with his poverty he had this incredible spirit of poverty you know everything that he wore was was patched or it was you know second hand it was really cheap etc uh you know he never spent any money on himself when he was going traveling uh beggars would come up to him you know he only had like a peanut butter sandwich or something he'd give it to them he didn't left nothing for himself so he said you know i'm not going to buy the food that's in the in the in the train stations because you know it's it's a it's a sandwich and it's cost two dollars that's too much for me to buy you know so so he's this incredible spirit of poverty people remember how he used to melt down the the wax stubs from the candles and then put and then melt them into these wax jars that he would then put on the altar for all night vigils with the muscle sacrament so he had this wonderful spirit of poverty i would say that it was his spirit of recollection that impressed me the most as a child i can remember that one of his favorite phrases from the gospels was this phrase from our lord in the last supper where jesus says abide in me and i in you and that really sums up beautifully this interior life of father catherine even when he was busy and he was very busy you know dealing with people and helping people and teaching them etc he was always focused on god it was always about god first and it was because it was about god first that he was able to help so many souls so it's his spirit of recollection i inherited some of his um sermons like that after he had died and among his his sermons he used to put on these little sermon notes on like any little piece of paper and so there's this little piece of paper among those notes and it says prayer is the occupation of the soul with god recollection is the preoccupation of the saul with god and that really sums up beautifully the spirit of father catherine he's definitely a very while he was very very active very clearly that that he is very clearly contemplative as well why is he important nowadays because of his fidelity to catholic tradition he did not he did not wander one way or the other he was never thinking about oh should i become a sort of a countest or should i become a modernist no he always knew that he was a traditional catholic no matter what one of his phrases which is used as the motto for the biography is only what the church has always taught and believed nothing more nothing less and that really sums up the spirit of faith of father catherine also he did not waver one side or the other he was never questioning sort of like um is this really what the church teaches no he knew it and he he kept to it and he was able to pass it on to each generation sense and father uh so kind of that's kind of the life of uh father catherine uh why uh why write the biography on him well father catherine he was the he converted my family to catholicism back in the 1970s so i felt that i owed it to him he was my first spiritual father mentor um honestly i can say that anything that i have good in me uh it after god and our lady i owed entirely to father catherine he had such an influence over my life uh you know there were the last 13 years of his life from the time i was five until the time i was 18 i i would serve mass regularly for father catherine sometimes two or three times a week so i grew up with this this this edifying holy old redemptorist who was you know redemptressed down to his fingertips and you totally traditional catholic all the way and it was a rare privilege that i cannot thank god enough for to that to have known him for those 13 years and that's certainly what made me determined to become a redemptorist myself and i i can certainly say that i i do not regret one moment of being a redemption and again that's thanks after god and our lady to father catherine now the i started collecting information on father catherine back in 19 he died in 1989 i started collecting stories about him and it was about 1998 just you know people would would see oh you're a redemption oh i knew father catherine you tell me these anecdotes i started writing them down and then it was just last year 2021 i was talking to the redemptorist uh archivist uh patrick hayes out in philadelphia you know he helps the moderate doctors there and i was uh talking to him about someone else and and i mentioned that i was thinking about writing this biography of father catherine he said oh hey you know i've i've seen his i've seen father kath ryan's file here in the archives so you know if you want any help i can certainly i could certainly help you out and uh if you ever get around to writing it give me a copy for our archives so i thought oh maybe that's divine providence trying to say something to me and i looked at my calendar and for the first time in 21 years of my priesthood i realized i don't have anything scheduled for six weeks so i thought oh i guess this is god saying something so i used those six weeks then to do the first rough draft of the biography i interviewed over the years i've interviewed about 60 people for the biography so there's a whole wealth of anecdotes stories um jokes about mother cath right as well many many different stories patrick hayes the archivist from the rudemptress was very helpful and he he opened up the archives to me he sent me over 200 pages of documents and letters and all sorts of things about father catherine so a lot of that made its way into this biography and i would there were things about father catherine i had certainly never heard of myself in my life fascinating stories so um so that was that was a big impulse in writing this book now another reason among several was to one reason for writing this book is lest these stories be lost because the older generation of traditional catholics are dying off now and the there is a real danger a number of us priests have been talking about this for a few years now there's a real danger that the younger generation of traditional catholics growing up now they have absolutely no idea what their parents and grandparents went through to remain traditional catholics and so it's a reminder this biography is a reminder to the younger generation of what their grandparents went through in order to keep their faith and to remind them also the sufferings of the traditional catholics and to to to to to appreciate what they went through i think that's an important aspect and realize that the crisis in the church is still going on you know 50 60 years later is still going on and the fight remains the same because even though the things have mutated they have changed over the years over the decades but the fight itself remains the same as traditional catholics we are dedicated heart and soul to eradicating the the neo-modernist errors from the catholic church and to return both to the hierarchy and to the poor faithful who have been abandoned by the hierarchy all these years to return to them this treasure this pearl of great price of the traditional catholic faith because it's only traditional catholicism that is going to be able to give two souls that's that grace that life of god that we need in order to save our souls and also to be sanctified another reason for writing this biography is to encourage other writers because as i say the older generation are dying off and we don't want these stories to be lost i know that there are a few uh trad history books that are in the in the pipeline at the moment i can think of three that i've been told about and certainly much to be encouraged the lives of these older priests lest they be forgotten the histories also of each of the traditional catholic chapels lest that be forgotten and it's important i think for us to be able to get these things written down doesn't even have to be written down at first obviously a good thing is to be able to get to the old timers and then to even if it's like a recording let them you know make them a recording of what their their memories are from those early years from the 60s and 70s and 80s and then eventually take those recordings and then transcribe them and turn that into something that can be can be published but i think this is an important thing lest it be lost thank you for listening to or watching the sspx podcast please keep in mind the best way to help more people see these videos and to hear this podcast is to subscribe on youtube or subscribe on your favorite podcast app and rate or review wherever you listen also please remember this is an apostolate it's free to listen or to watch anytime but we also need your help would you please consider submitting a one-time donation or sign up for a small five ten or twenty dollar a month donation at sspxpodcast.com this helps us to continue this important work of sharing the beauty and the truth of traditional catholicism with as many people as possible until next time thank you for listening and god bless you [Music] you

Channel: SSPX News - English

Views: 5,637

Keywords: sspx, fsspx, catholic, catholic church, trad catholic, traditional catholic, catholic seminary, fsspx.news, sspx news, catholic mass, roman catholic mass, society of st pius x, archbishop marcel lefebvre, conservative catholic, tradcatholic, sspx podcast, crisis in the church, crisis series, modernist catholics, vatican ii, vatican council, liberal catholics, catholic priest, sspx chapel, latin mass, novus ordo, traditional mass

Id: r-zzFUNJhUo

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2022