This may derail the thread but I think it is related.  Didn’t Gary Giuffre speculate that the Freemasons knew they couldn’t count on electing their own man directly?  Because if they had elected a Freemason directly, he would have converted to Catholicism and turned out to be a decent pope. After all Our Lord prayed that Peter would not lose his faith.  So that’s why Bellarmine believed no pope would ever fall into heresy.  And then the same thing happened at the 1962 conclave.  By 1978 the new religion was already instituted so those conclaves were not legitimate any way.  But both Roncalli and Montini were illegitimately installed.  That’s the only way the Freemasons could be sure their guy wouldn’t be converted by the grace of the office.  Why would they wait for Siri to be elected first before going nuclear?  Why not just bully the cardinals into electing their man from the getgo?  Because they wanted their guy to never actually receive the office.  They wanted a pope in name only.

If they merely stuck an occult heretic impostor into the See, God would still have protected the See from error.  It's only by having a legitimate Pope shoved aside preventing the next one from being legitimate that God's protection of the Magisterium would recede from the person.  Let's say Roncalli had been elected straight out and he wanted to teach grave error to the Church.  God would prevent him from doing so ... even to the point of striking him dead.  But if Roncalli was not the legitimate Pope, God's protection against error would not be with him.

The reason they cannot elect a pope is because they do not have the legal right to do so.

I may have asked this before, its a question i have periodically, but I'm gonna raise this again.

if you're a Sede, what exactly prevents the Sedevacantist bishops from holding a conclave and electing a pope?

I mean pretty much every trad and especially every sede already agrees with some principle of "the normal rules don't apply during a crisis situation."  So why would it be that the CHurch couldn't produce for itself a pope?

Even with Sedeprivationism, would having a non Catholic (under the sede paradigm) with a valid election to the pontificate that they couldn't receive really inhibit the  Church from producing for itself a new pope?  

Like hypothetically, if the College of Cardinals somehow elected a Protestant to the papacy in the 1500s, OK that would be invalid, they could then elect another pope.  They wouldn't have to wait till the Protestant converted or died, right?

What am I missing here?  'cause where I'm sitting right now, I understand (though don't agree with) the sede diagnosis, but they seem to write themselves into a corner on the solution.  

Do you buy the Dimond 7 priest kings theory?

I wonder what the Dimonds will do if another Pope is elected (whether you and they think he's an antipope or not being irrelevant) since the way they currently framed the theory seems to bank on Francis being the last serious claimant.

Interesting, Lad. I value your opinion, and appreciate your sharing that.

The pope is necessary.  And when there isn’t a pope, it is the hierarchy’s chief responsibility to provide the Church with one.  To say that the pope isn’t necessary is to align oneself to Protestant heretics and Orthodox schismatics.  The pope is our guarantee against falling away from the faith.  You can not be sure you yourself have preserved your faith unless you are united with the pope.  In the case where there is no pope for an extended period of time or at least where the supposed pope is a manifest heretic we should be terrified for our own salvation.