Do you realize that what you wrote is heretical? No person or council is above the pope, but fortunately Bergoglio is not the pope.

He is satans little helper. 

So that's the sedevacantist take on the problem. Sounds simple enough, but how can the layman be absolutely sure that the current pope is not in fact pope?

Some quick research showed that in theory, a heretical pope would remove himself from office per canon law, which states that anyone who has publicly defected from the Catholic faith or from the communion of the Church is removed from an ecclesiastical office by the law itself.

But there's no canon law to deal with this emergency situation in the Church (a pope becoming heretical), so what we can deduce from this is that the pope, be it a valid one or not, does not have any authority (the position of +ABL) and we have to wait for a council of bishops and cardinals to take action or simply, a divine intervention. Taking the example of Honorius, who "only" was guilty of promoting heresy in a letter of his, was excommunicated posthumously by a subsequent council, the question whether or not he was a valid pope was not formally answered anyhow.

That’s the Fr. Chazal sede-impoundist position ... which I do not find at all unreasonable.  In fact, there’s a lot going for that position.  I tend to not care about those details ... as they can be and have been disputed.  I’m mostly concerned about not undermining the Church’s indefectibility.  That is my chief issue with some articulations of R&R.  I also have zero problem with +Lefebvre’s overall position, which I think in the final analysis resembled that of Fr. Chazal, even though the Archbishop didn’t articulate it with such theological precision.

It really isn't clear what is planned. Francis offered some words on Summorum Pontificuм, which Marco Tossati interpreted, that's it. Although there are some instances like the evisceration of the Franciscans of the Immaculate and various hostile actions towards smaller traditional bodies at the instance of hostile Conciliar bishops, Francis has been largely indifferent to the Mass of Ages. There have even gestures of recognition for the SSPX. Catholic tradition remains a very small part of the great numbers who count themselves Catholic.

Thanks for your insight, Ladislaus. I too think that this is a reasonable position as long as it doesn't reach dogmatic status among its advocates, which then poses yet another issue.

However I don't get how R&R positions undermine the Church's indefectibility? The recent popes that, by their own actions, have caused so much turmoil about their validity (mainly post Vatican II) interestingly enough didn't proclaim a single dogma, nor did they ever invoke the somewhat recent (1870) criteria of papal infallibilty if I'm not mistaken.

That's because the overall inerrancy of the Church's Magisterium and Universal Discipline are not limited to the .1% of all Catholic teaching that has been dogmatically defined.  Overall, the Holy Spirit guides the Magisterium, the papacy, the Mass, etc.  To hold that these can become so corrupt that Catholics must refuse communion with and/or submission to the hierarchy, that's tantamount to a defection of the Church.  If we were talking about an isolated aberrant position here or there, then the typical response is for Catholics to respectfully question these through the appropriate channels.