Yes, I've been through that story a number of times. One version says that, since he was hired for a year, they just forgot about it when the year was up, since the organ was still sounding. Widor never got the "titulaire" title, but his "temporary" was a new meaning of the word.
As for his "symphonies", I agree that parts of them leave one wondering, and at least some of the first ones had actually already been composed as separate pieces before he came up with the "symphony" idea.
A fellow named John Near, who last I heard was a professor at a small Christian Science college in the midwest, did his doctoral on Widor's symphonies and did quite thorough research on the various versions of them. It seems Widor made numerous changes as time went on, but that's what professors live for -- to delve into everything that happened and see if they can produce a "definitive" version. And surely there will be another one later who will choose to "revise" Near's work.
I once had a history professor at San Jose State who had done his dissertation on the presidential election of 1908. That election is somewhat laughed at, since Teddy Roosevelt sort of hand-picked Taft to succeed him. But when you need a subject for a dissertation, all bets are off.
BTW, there was another professor in the history department at SJS, Jackson Turner Main, who was a grandson of Frederick Jackson Turner, of "no more frontier" fame.