There is also talk that Father Z is currently working on securing his own retreat house where he can run Ignatian retreats again. I've been on retreat with Father Z in the past and it was a great experience.

Please let us not call him Fr. Z people, otherwise the infamous neocon and culinary priest will come to mind...

The name Zendejas is not that long nor that complicated. Zendejas rhymes with Cervejas and this news deserves some celebration anyways, so...  :cheers:

A couple of clarifications. I was at the Mass in NJ, which he offered after the morning Mass in CT.

Father was not expelled. He requested to be dismissed from the Society, and he left.

His desire is to settle down and to provide a stable parish life for people in the North East. He will be coming to NJ every Sunday and holy day of obligation.

Before being assigned to TX, he was the Prior of St. Ignatius Retreat House in Ridgefield CT, so there are a lot of people in this area who know him.

He said quite a bit, but there was a lot he didn't say. He gave us a talk after Mass. He is very soft-spoken and has an accent that at times is difficult to understand, so I hesitate to try to quote him, as I didn't catch every word.

While he definitely is against the new direction in the SSPX, criticizing the Society will not be a big focus with him. He just wants to provide the Sacraments and teach the Faith to the same groups every week. He emphasized how important stability is, especially for children.

He is not at odds with Fr. Pfeiffer, and would be happy if Father ever came to the NorthEast to help with confessions or anything else, but he is not interested in doing much if any traveling.

I myself have some problems with the whole Resistance position, which I am not interested in getting into here, but Father is a tremendous priest, and this is a great shot in the arm to the core group of members who have been having holy hours every week, when a priest was not available.

While he definitely is against the new direction in the SSPX, criticizing the Society will not be a big focus with him. He just wants to provide the Sacraments and teach the Faith to the same groups every week. He emphasized how important stability is, especially for children.

He is not at odds with Fr. Pfeiffer, and would be happy if Father ever came to the NorthEast to help with confessions or anything else, but he is not interested in doing much if any traveling.

I myself have some problems with the whole Resistance position, which I am not interested in getting into here, but Father is a tremendous priest, and this is a great shot in the arm to the core group of members who have been having holy hours every week, when a priest was not available.

I want to address these points.

1. It almost sounds like a good Resistance priest would attack Bishop Fellay from the pulpit on a regular basis. That hasn't been my experience with...pretty much every Resistance priest who isn't Fr. Pfeiffer :)   Even Fr. Pfeiffer I'd cut some slack because he was the one who got the movement started, and was trying to wake up as many priests as possible, etc.

But, long story short, MANY priests have "moved on" and are going about the business of being classic "Archbishop Lefebvre's SSPX"-style priests, teaching the Faith, fighting Modernism, giving the Sacraments, and leading us to holiness.

I guess what I'm saying here is that Fr. Zendejas is NOT somehow unique in this regard.

2. Fr. Zendejas sounds like many other priests aligned with the Resistance.
How  many of them DO travel? I can list them on one hand, and still have a couple fingers to spare! I think the only traveling priests are Fr. Pfeiffer, Fr. Hewko, and Fr. Girouard. Fr. Voigt, for example, has dedicated Mass circuits in Minnesota and Texas. Maybe this is how the Resistance is developing? Plane tickets are expensive. It's developing away from the primordial "we have 20 Mass centers, and two priests fly all over the country to try to meet them". I suppose that's a good thing!

3. Regarding the "Resistance" -- I won't be getting a large, full back tattoo that says "Resistance" any time soon either. I don't care what a given priest calls himself -- what kind of "coat" he wears -- as long as he is a good Traditional priest who makes NO compromise with modernism or modernist Rome. That is to say, any priest who understands the Traditional movement and its reason for being (who understands, for example, that Tradition needs no special permission from Rome!) will have my full support.

Although I was a fervent cheerleader for the SSPX for many years, I'm kind of sour on "groups" at this point myself. In other words, I haven't transferred my old cheerleading fervor to the Resistance or any other target. If anything, I've redirected it to the Catholic Church/Traditional movement in general. I'm trying to focus on the basics of being a Traditional Catholic as much as possible. I'm done with patriotism for a given group. I will cheer any individual priest, bishop, or location that fights the good fight for Tradition against the sewer of all heresies, Modernism.

That's why I'm rather fond of Bishop Williamson's idea of a loose network of independent chapels. I'm a small government guy myself! Back in the day, (like, 200 years ago) the individual States had much more power vis-a-vis the Federal Government than they do today. The concept is simple: Don't have the federal government do something that the state government can do; don't have the state government do something the local county government can do, etc.

(Really, the adjective Traditional is redundant when applied to Catholic, as the Catholic religion is intrinsically traditional, but we have to use that term to distinguish ourselves from the Conciliar religion these days... such is life.)

This approach would be good if we had more priests. Father will undoubtedly take some workload from Frs Pfeiffer and Hewko, but we need more priests.

Of course we do.

But unless we all turn our families into enclaves of Christ's extended kingdom on earth, there will be no vocations in the future. We have to teach our sons how to work, how to sacrifice, how to be mortified, and how to love God above all else. And the first step is keeping them unsullied from the antediluvian (pre-Flood) world around them...

I was at the Mass in NJ, which he offered after the morning Mass in CT.
…
His desire is to settle down and to provide a stable parish life for people in the North East. He will be coming to NJ every Sunday and holy day of obligation. …

I gather from something Matthew wrote on another thread that this is Sparta, NJ. Is that correct? Also, may I ask where Mass is offered there, and is it regularly scheduled or organized on an impromptu basis?

… He is very soft-spoken and has an accent that at times is difficult to understand …

Very delicately (under)stated!

Although this is potentially a good thing, we should temper our enthusiasm for the moment. Fr. Zendejas has NOT actually left the XSPX, and he has NOT actually joined the Resistance. He did say that he and Fr.Pfeiffer "are on the same page" and that he intended to "help him out". Most questions surrounding his apparent departure from XSPX remain unanswered. Whoever made the initial arrangements with Fr. Zendejas, would have been better advised to refer him directly to Fr.Pfeiffer.

Quote from: Matthew

I told you all he was a "solid, good priest". I'm pleased, but not shocked or surprised.

I suspected -- for good reason -- that his transfer had to do with his attitude towards the classic SSPX position (positive) and Modernist Rome/Vatican II (negative).

Priests like Fr. Zendejas had to make a choice eventually. When they get transferred, it tends to shake things up (either for the place they left, or the place they get sent to).

I have lost track of transfers,  where was Father Zendajas moved from, and where was he sent?

Marsha

Father was Prior of the priory near Houston, TX for many years.
He was transferred to France (Where in France? I think somewhere where they speak French -- it's all the same to me! Have never been there; don't ever care to) on August 15, 2014.