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OK, but if you look at the Novus Ordo Watch quote, they attacked John XXIII saying that it's possible for people to be saved without converting, not just for making it normative or normal or common.  At the end of the day, there's not much theological difference between saying 1 out of 1,000 can be saved without converting or saying that 900 out of 1,000 can be saved.  It's all speculation anyway, since we don't know the actual numbers.  But if you say that 1 can be saved without conversion, then why not 10, why not 100? ... and certainly none are prevented from being saved by any kind of theological necessity.

So, for instance, even among Catholics ... you could claim that 99% of Catholics are saved, or argue that 1% are saved, but that's speculation regarding the state of souls more than it entails some theological principle.

Logically I see what you’re saying but emotionally I just can’t reconcile with it.  Back when I was in the RC I remember St. Louis de montforts sermon on the fewness of the saved absolutely drove me BONKERS.  Terrifies me to the core.  Yet from what you’re saying there’s no strict theological difference between what he was saying and saying 99 percent of Catholics are saved.  Sure, but experientially it really wasn’t like that.

the more I’m thinking about it the more I’d concede a lot of your other points. I was gonna say that from my vantage point (as an Ortho, so obviously different) the big issue/difference is presuming to *know* that people outside the church are saved.  But then, I guess the trads do that too!  And even weirder, like you’ve stated, they have this weird and seemingly irrational hatred and contempt for “Feeneyites.” I never really had this even tho I wasn’t one.  I do wonder if some of it is just because the Dimonds condemn almost everyone, even other Sedes, that motivated this.  That’s the only sense I can make of this.  

Yes.  That’s why the attack on EENS started centuries ago.  EENS has been under attack for millennia, which is why the Church has had to define it THREE different times.  (And needs to redefine it a 4th time).  

Once the devil gets the door cracked open, even an inch, to non-Catholics being saved, there’s no logical end.  The slippery slope can continue to widen that door until salvation is open to everyone (in theory).  Which is what the devil needs, in order to recreate his tower/of/babel, one-world religion for Antichrist.  

Most people don’t get the WHY behind the attacks on EENS.  thus they see people (like Fr Feeney) who try to defend strict salvation as “mean” or “extreme”.  They’ve fallen victim to the Protestant notion of “God loves everyone.”  

In fact, Protestantism was one of the biggest EENS attackers, starting in 1517 with Luther.  “Salvation by Faith alone”.  No rules, no church attendance needed, no commandments, just belief.  The first beginnings of the Antichrist religion.  

As Father Feeney famously pointed out, BoD requires an ardent desire to receive the Sacrament.  But BoD can make you desire it less ardently, because of the complacency that, "oh well, if I die now, I could be saved by BoD anyway".

There's a rather disedifying story about Archbishop Lefebvre.  +Lefebvre, having visited a missionary area, as he was leaving, was acosted by a native who asked if +Lefebvre could baptize him, since he was worried about not being saved if he died before +Lefebvre's next visit (which was some time off).  See, if that were me, I'd be like "this man has more faith than most Traditional Catholics" and then baptize him right there.  But +Lefebvre told him not to worry about it because if he died before then that Baptism of Desire would take care of it.  So ... by telling him this, it turned a zealous desire to be baptized that if there WERE a BoD, that's precisely the kind of zeal and ardent desire (and intention) needed for it to take effect.  But now this poor soul, having "relax" ... would have stopped desiring it with the same zeal as before, and quite possibly jeopardized his ability to be saved by BoD (if it existed).

Again, +Lefebvre was undoubtedly acting in good faith ... but he too had been poisoned by centuries of attacks on EENS.  He was no theologian, never trained as such ... but I'm sure that he learned this stuff from teachers whom he respected as otherwise quite Traditional and conservative.  Karl Rahner remarked with amazement after Vatican II that none of the conservative Fathers had made so much as a peep about what he (rightly) considered THE single most revolutionary aspect of the "Council", namely, what he euphemistically referred to as the "increasing hope of salvation for non-Catholics".  While many conservatives excoriate Rahner for his notion of "Anonymous Catholic", where he holds that people can be saved BY Christ and the Church even if they are not IN the Church.  Welp. +Lefebvre held the same thing, where in his "Letter to Confused Catholics" articulated the same thing, salvation for the "Anonymous Catholic".  Incidentally, Rahner was criticed by the more rabid Modernists for holding that it was still BY Christ and the Church that they were saved.  So, yeah, this would explain why nobody noticed.  Well, Rahner noticed, and he was right.  ALL the V2 errors are rooted in this single fundamental error.  It is in fact, in terms of error, the "One Ring to Rule them All", and THE theological "Rosetta stone", as it were, to interpret all the V2 errors.