["Fr. Z"] has never been a traditional priest and, as far as I know, he is not a traditional priest now.
Zuhlsdorf is a
Novus Ordo neocon--thus
not traditional as the term is used on CathInfo.
He is either oblivious or
disingenuous about the doctrinal issues & "spirit of Vatican II", by which Modernist Rome turned away from the religion of Eternal Rome. Including the issue of the doubtful validity of the
Novus Ordo ordinations and consecrations. An explosive one for him personally, considering that it was JP II
- who presided at Zuhlsdorf's "ordination" in St. Peter's Basilica.
But really, what should any of "Father" Z.'s readers expect? He was born in 1959, thus Vatican II concluded before he reached the
age of reason. Not to say that he would have been even childishly
aware of V-II, because he was born and reared as a
Lutheran!  He didn't convert to
any variety of
Catholicism until the
mid1980s. He would need to have been the beneficiary of extraördinary gifts of divine grace to understand Catholicism as it was before Vatican II, because his conversion did not occur until 2 decades of conciliar modernism had transformed the mainstream "Catholic Church". He would need extraördinary grace to recognize that the predominately
self-referential docuмents that've been issued "in the spirit of Vatican II" are persistent efforts by the Vatican modernists to apply "
literature cleansing" to scuttle Catholic tradition.
Should it be any real surprise that as a
cradle Protestant, Zuhlsdorf would bond more strongly with the Protestantized
Novus Ordo religion, as taught by its seminaries? And that as an American, he would share his native culture's modern obsession with
celebrities, leading him into public
papolatry and
magisterialism-------
Note +: At least Karol Wotyla was a
traditionally valid bishop: Becoming auxiliary bishop-elect of Kraków in July 1958 (Pope Pius XII); consecrated in Wawel Cathedral (named for the hill on which it's situated in Kraków) in Sep. 1958 (Abp. Baziak, Bp. Kominek, Bp. Jop); and elevated to Archbishop of Krakow in Dec. 1963 (Paul VI). Too bad for Zuhlsdorf that Paul VI's
New Ordinal would've been in exclusive use for 2 decades when his "ordination" was performed in 1991.
Note *: The pair of terms as defined in <
http://www.traditio.com/tradlib/faq06.txt>