Except we owe the pope submission and obedience. Disregarding his authority to bind and loose and refusing religious submission based on personal opinion is not Catholic. Even if we were to, for example, say canonisations are not infallible - it would still be sinful to reject the Pope's canonisations. The Catholic way, even for fallible things, is to submit to authority until told otherwise. That's largely the basis for sedeplenism, is it not? Most Trad sedeplenists acknowledge that Francis is a heretic, but they submit to the Church and wait for the Church to declare it. So why do you not do the same for the mass or canonisations or matters of canon law? It's a hugely inconsistent position.
I really don't see evidence, whether in Vatican I, or anywhere else, for the kind of ultramontanism that I see some sedevacantists (and some pro-conciliar sedeplenists like the Where Peter Is crowd) advocating. I think its completely reasonable to take a position that's skeptical of the New Mass, skeptical of Vatican II (or *at least* its prudence), being skeptical of Vatican II canonizations, and yet still accepting Francis as the Pope.
Where the problem comes in for me is the sheer level of rebelliousness I see from the SSPX Resistance, where it really does seem to me that there's no practical meaning to having a pope, yet they still have one.
Speaking for myself (and I know I'm not the standard for anything), I don't attend the New Mass, and I don't venerate the post Vatican II saints. But I also freely and willingly state that I don't do those things because I have *doubts* about them, doubts which I think are grounded in good reasons, yes, but I also don't go around judging people for doing something that Rome, at least at the moment, is allowing. I'll express my reservations about say a JPII, if it comes up, but I don't tell people they're sinning if they venerate him. Same with attending the NO, for the most part.
Lefebvre, it seems, whatever his exact opinions (and as we all know, his opinions aren't infallible) seemed to have his back against the wall. There was no general permission for the Latin Mass like today. Assisi had just happened. There was no impending regularization for the SSPX, there was not even an FSSP. If Lefebvre had died without consecrating any bishops, the Novus Ordo would very likely have become the ONLY Western Rite mass.... the Western Tridentine Rite would effectively have been gutted. I also... don't get the impression that hermeneutic of continuity (however naive we may or may not think that is) was even a live option at the time. I'm not singing his praises, or saying he was the best thing since sliced bread, but a lot of these corrections were made by Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI allowed the Latin mass to be celebrated everywhere, and he also seems to have (both by lifting the SSPX excommunications and trying to argue for hermeneutic of continuity) allowed for a lot more skepticism of Vatican II. That's not to say that Benedict was a great pope or that he was a trad, but I really have a hard time comparing the situation in 2019, as much as the pope and many of the bishops are liberal, with the situation in 1988. It really does seem like Lefebvre did what he had to do. And occasionally disobeying authority to obey a higher authority is justified. The Pope is not God, he can be wrong.
But the Resistance attitude really does seem to be like "Yes, the Pope is the Pope but we want nothing to do with him." Not even, like "We won't compromise for him" but like really, wanting nothing to do with him, and not thinking he has any authority at all. That seems problematic to me, and inconsistent.
But I don't think its inconsistent to have doubts about certain things, or to not just accept something that seems like a fairly obvious deviation from the past.