Easy, logical Catholic argumentation for sedevacantism (and what is already utilized by everyone in the SSPX, Resistance, and Chazalian-sede-but-it's-not-really-sede-otherwise-people-would-get-upset camp).

It really does not take much to understand. You can reduce the argument down to two simple statements:

Catholics are required to be baptized and profess the true Faith (Pope Pius XII formula, Mystici Corporis 22) in order to remain Catholics. "Pope" Francis is baptized, but does not profess the true Faith. Therefore, he is not a Catholic.

Only members of the Body can hold Catholic office (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum 15). "Pope" Francis is not a Catholic. Therefore, he is not a legitimate Pope.

What dogma of the Church does the sedevacantist position deny?  If you can't say, you should retract your rash assertion.

If there has been no pope since John XXIII or Paul VI then there are no more bishops with jurisdiction which means no more apostolicity which is one of the four marks of the Church. This is heretical. 

So you can make a judgment that the "pope" is not worthy of your obedience but you can't make a judgment about why he is not worthy of your obedience?  It's not that hard to research the issue.

Of course we make a judgement, because in knowing our holy faith, we know what offends God even when it doesn't offend the pope, or the pope glories in it and wants us to follow along. 

I always find it incredible that this needs explaining to trads at all.

After the example of St. Thomas More: "We remain the popes' good subjects, but God's first." You act as if this is error, or heresy or evil or something. It's not evil, IT'S CATHOLIC.

Meanwhile, some sedes have said they'd forsake the true faith for the new faith if they were convinced the pope is the pope. Talk about reckless abandon. This idea bespeaks of having a faith that is very weak and fruitless, certainly not worth much at all when for any reason, one is ready and willing to just throw whatever faith they have away.

The evil of modernism is on going. People being instruments of this evil are the direct cause of the perpetual trainwreck.  Those individuals hold positions that they use to continue the evil against Christ and his faithful.  There names shouldn't even be mentioned unless in prayer for conversion or their demise.  Obviously we hope for their final perseverance.  The Thesis is one possible understanding of the state of the church.  

I see a parallel understanding of how and why most medical doctors dropped the ball over these last couple of years.  Yes they lost my respect for their betrayal.

Nope, it does not matter to either of us, you should have quoted the rest of my post.

I am subject to the pope, but God first. It's not the least bit complicated and is summed up beautifully in my sig.

Agreed. And recognizing that we have a pope is a big part of being subject to him.

IMO, God has allowed a Modernist sect to occupy the Church. We tend to place the blame all on human error or heresy, but since God has allowed it, it would seem that certain amount of prudence is required. We have to do what we can to still be loyal to the papacy, and that means not going to the extreme of believing that there's no pope. (Though I'm not against Catholics, in principle, adopting sedevacantism - it's when they push it on everyone else that I have a problem, and that happens a lot around here - like this thread).

And yes, we are subject to God first. As you say, it's not complicated. It seems that sedevacantism is a lot more complicated.

5. I'm not dissing or even rejecting Fr. Chazal's position. I just don't have A) the training or B) the objective knowledge of the situation to know if it's correct or not.

6. We shouldn't get the mindset that we need to be wearing the right jersey (having the right opinion on every nuance of the Crisis) to save our soul. Even if I was fervently excited about Fr. Chazal's writings, then what? I still have to choose from the AVAILABLE positions that offer Mass in my country.

OK.  Now, the rest of your post was a reference more to sedevacatism proper, etc.

Here's where it matters, Matthew, and why I feel that Father Chazal's position is so important.

We all agree that the Crisis is not just about the Mass and the Sacraments, but it's about the faith.  Yet the problem with classic R&R, the biggest reason that there are sedevacantists in the first place, is the attribution of this degree of decay to legitimate Catholic authority.  It sets up a theology regarding the papacy and regarding Catholic ecclesiology that is much more Old Catolic than it is Catholic.  THAT is the problem with classic R&R; it's a slightly repackaged form of Old Catholicism.  It puts the very faith we're trying to preserve in great peril.

At the end of the day, on one level, you're right that the "positions" aren't critical ... but the PRINCIPLES behind SOME of the positions actually undermine Catholic faith, and in particular the classic R&R position.  As far as I'm concerned, one could argue that Montini was not acting freely because he was blackemailed, heck, one could hold that Montini was replaced by a double, ... whatever, really.  I myself believe that Cardinal Siri was the legitimate pope until his death in 1989.  But whatever position we hold cannot undermine the prerogatives and authority of the Catholic Magisterium.  We cannot throw the Church under the bus to ... preserve the Church.  There is absolutely NOTHING Traditional about claiming that Catholics can freely reject the Magisterium of an Ecuмenical Council, of 60+ years of papal Magisterium, reject the public worship of the Church as harmful to souls and offensive to God, reject many (most?) of the "saints" canonized by the Church, etc.  I defy anyone to find any Catholic theologian who ever taught this in the entire history of the Church.  In fact, the claims of the Prots and the Old Catholics echo nearly verbatim the assertion that the current Church had departed from the purity of Tradition.  In fact, the Old Catholic Declaration of Utrecht is repeated nearly verbatim on a daily basis by the adherents of classic R&R, right down to starting with that famous citation from St. Vincent of Lerins.

Father Chazal's position eliminates the need to throw the prerogatives of the Church and the Magisterium under the bus.  Archbishop Lefebvre clearly echoed Catholic teaching that the Papacy, that Ecuмenical Councils, that the Magisterium in general, and that the Church's public worship, are all guided by the Holy Spirit, and he says to sedevancantists, "I agree with you," that this degree of destruction is not possible given this guidance by and protection of the Holy Spirit.  This is expressed in the famous audio that Father Ringrose posted when he became (some flavor of) sedevacantist.  This is where people become sedevacantists.  They return to Tradition and at some point start reading pre-Vatican II theology, and realize that this is the constant TRADITIONAL teaching of the Church.  So, Archibishop Lefebvre, then, conceding this principle and agreeing with sedevacantists (on their Major), went through a few possible explanations, dismissing most of them as unlikely, and concluded with saying that SV is possible.  He simply never had enough of a confidece that this was THE answer to come out with it.  But he didn't rule it out.  Yet the important thing is that he affirmed without hesitation the principle that the protection of the Holy Spirit over the Church and the Papacy preclude Vatican II and the NOM having been produced by legitimate papal authority exercised freely.

So getting behind an explanation such as Father Chazal's is absolute critical to defend Traditional Catholic teaching regarding the nature of the Church and the Papacy ... and to avoid sliding into a repackaged Old Catholicism.

And if people don't see the problem, or don't understand why it "matters," then that's a sign of how far this pernicious thinking has already infected their minds.

Archbishop Lefebvre:

Now some priests (even some priests in the Society) say that we Catholics need not worry about what is happening in the Vatican; we have the true sacraments, the true Mass, the true doctrine, so why worry about whether the pope is heretic or an impostor or whatever; it is of no importance to us. But I think that is not true. If any man is important in the Church it is the pope.

Yep.  That's pretty much what I find so weak about it. 

But that's accidental to the position itself.  Position itself is very solid.