Perhaps Fr Cekada was not alleging that he could point out clear instances of pertinacious heresy on the part of Roncalli and Montini prior to election.  Perhaps rather he was saying something like the following.  We know by their promulgation of evil morals and false doctrines that these men cannot have been true popes.  Proving that these men fell from the papal office due to heresy (which would arguably entail proving their commission of the canonical crime of heresy) is not necessary, because if they simply committed the public sin of heresy, (abstracting from the canonical crime) the election itself would be invaliated by Divine Law.  Since we know they were heretics after their elections, it is reasonable to assume they were heretics prior, and a likely reason for their failure to attain the papacy may have been committing the public sin of heresy and thereby losing membership in the Church.  Perhaps he was saying that sedevacantists should abandon the idea (or had abandoned the idea) that these men fell from the papacy since there is a simpler explanation for their apparent lack of authority: their having never attained the office to begin with due to the sin of heresy.

Nonsense.  I'm surprised that I know more about what Father Cekada has said than those who hang off his every word.



5:17 - 5:45 ... Father Cekada categorically applies "the white-cassocked Conciliar heresiarchs" as a matter or principle or their general "argument", saying they were never true popes in the first place.  He could have said that they don't hold that it applies to "all" of the Conciliar papal claimants, just to some, but he made a categorical statement that made it sound like a matter of principle or argument.  He pushed aside a huge part of Salza & Siscoe as simply not applying, but he would have had to address it for the likes of the earlier Conciliar papal claimants even if it didn't apply to the current one.

20:54 "A Zombie Argument"

21:32 -- "... sedevacantists no longer believe Bergoglio, Ratzinger, JP2 and the rest ever became true popes in the first place"

There you have it.  Gaslighting, eh?

In any case, if it didn't apply to Montini, Father was not entitled to sweep away the S&S argument because he'd still have to address it vis-a-vis Montini, but he brushed the entire thing off the table by simply saying they no longer believe they were ever true popes in the first place.

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Yes, I think his point is that it's obvious that they were heretics after their election, so they must have been heretics before their election.

I think Fr. Cekada's argument is that the five opinions of St. Robert Bellarmine, for example, that Sisco and Salza are always going on about, are actually a red herring inasmuch as they assume these guys were valid popes to begin with. St. Robert Bellarmine is talking about someone who is unquestionably pope, who is publicly Catholic, but who later (ad arguendo) publicly falls from the faith. That is not the case here, as the modernist anti-popes were modernist from the very beginning of their anti-reign, so it only makes sense to assume they were heretics before their election.

And a heretic cannot validly be elected pope. This makes the John of St. Thomas and Cajetan moot.

This is a reductio ad absurdum argument, as Fr. Cekada made it. He said either these people were faithful Catholics before their election and somehow turned into raging heretics as soon as they were elected , or they were heretics already and the election was invalid.

Since the first possibility is , the second one must be true.

At least in terms of Montini, he has to actually address the argument, and the bulk of the V2 damage and the NOM and the vitiation of the Sacraments took place under Montini's "watch".  So either he has to present evidence that Montini was a manifest heretic before his "election" or address the S&S arguments.