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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.