There is a rather big difference between saying what Archbishop Lefebvre was sometimes on the verge of saying, that the antichrist in Rome called pope is not a pope because he is a heretic, and Dave Bawden's claiming to be a pope because his Mom and Dad and a few outside sympathizers- and he- voted him into that high office.

How do Dave's arguments about the non-popehood of Josef Ratzinger differ from those of, say, Father Cekada? Maybe they don't differ at all. And maybe his arguments about the Divinity of Christ being taught in the Synoptics as well as in John don't differ from those of St Pius X. And so?

So Dave is like sedevacantists in that he reasons that Josef Ratzinger is not a pope. But that is where the similarity stops. Why don't ALL those who deny the popehood of the Conciliar Church claimants get themselves elected pope? Why have only ten or twelve opponents of the Roman claimants done so since 1965? Why does that step occur to so few? I would say that it is gratuitously insulting to sedevacantists to deny them their dignity as sane adults and not answer one's own question about how they differ from poor Dave: the answer is that sane sedevacantists are as capable as sane Modernists or Jєωs or atheists or sedeplenist Traditionalists of seeing the insanity of Kansan layman Dave's election by an obscure few to be spiritual Lord of the earth and Bishop of Rome against all canon law and ecclesiastical precedent and right reason.

We could turn this around. Look what happens when people get desperate to see unlikely candidates of ANY kind on the papal throne. After all, what Pope Michael has in common with the SSPX is that they are both sedeplenist. And actually, Dave sounds a lot like sedeplenist Traditionalists to me. He has harsh words for sedevacantists, just as they do. He says that the sedevacantist position is a sin against Catholic faith on the divine constitution of the Church in terms that are reminiscent of the more virulent anti-seddie Traddies.

How do Dave's arguments against sedevacantists differ from those in the SSPX and most of those who attend Mass at SSPX centers?

He took the sedevacantist path to get to where he is today? That's tricky. Certainly, he would not have wangled a seat on the Throne of Peter had he believed that Karol Wojtyla was currently occupying it. But we could also say that he took the sedeplenist path to get to where he is today. Like adherents of the SSPX he reasoned that THERE HAS TO BE A POPE. (Otherwise Jesus lied, and the gates of hell prevailed, and the Church's visibility is kaput etc...)

We could say that Dave Bawden at least is not a heretic and therefore a more serious candidate for popehood than anyone who fell into the category that Archbishop Lefebvre called "Conciliar" or "schismatic" or "bastard" or "antichrist." Any Traditionalist who reveres Archbishop Lefebvre should show respect for the thesis that a putative pope whom he called an antichrist might not be a pope for reasons given by St Robert Bellarmine and other eminent divines.

Just because Josef Ratzinger's claim is not laughable in the way Dave Bawden's is does not make it any more convincing.

I think that it would be refreshing as well as a step in the right direction to take the Bawden ball and run with it in a new direction, rather than go on with the same old, same old Traddie Vs Seddie polemics. We could poke fun at the absurdity of his bargain basement papacy but also show some rueful fellow feeling for him: I can't be the only one who has had to deal with would-be Henochs and Elijahs in the Traditionalist world.

And who here (except maybe the ladies: they don't seem to have the same Walter Mitty streak as guys) hasn't been caught by his Guardian Angel seeking relief from the latest New Pentecost horror in some kind of personally tailored daydream of salvation? "The Day will come when God will bring relief to Catholic souls. It will be on Easter Sunday. No, on the very last day of the Traditional liturgical calendar. Our Lady will be involved somehow. A great church will be built in connection to this wondrous event. I shall live to offer thanks in that church."

As I said before, Dave just went overboard and stepped into the salvation fantasy bubble above his head. I've known many, many other strung-out Catholics who just were better at managing their bubbles, keeping them on a chain at a polite distance the way St Margaret did the devil that beset her... I just can't imagine anyone's taking Pope Michael seriously enough as a false pope and a schismatic not to feel sympathetic and protective, in an appropriately patronizing way, towards the latest Kansan who got knocked in the noggin and had wild dreams about himself...

Matthew wrote, "A few friends and your mother can't elect you pope -- I think we all can agree on that. And unless he was properly ordained (matter & form) he can't be a priest."

This, as you see, manifests a high degree of lunacy.

Matthew also wrote, "I was asking HOW his arguments differed from other sedevacantists. He obviously took the "sedevacantist" path to get to the point he's at today. Where did he go wrong, in YOUR estimation?"

I honestly have not read his arguments, and do not think it matters.  As he has manifested real lunacy, I worry not if his arguments are, in many (or even all) cases, the same as those with which I agree.  Even crazy people are right about many things much of the time.  The insanity just causes the processing of the information, and the resultant strange actions, to be the real problem.

Dave's "lunacy" isn't quite as idiosyncratic as we might like to think.

As far as I can tell, he does not even make a (credible) case that he has been ordained and consecrated.  That makes him a total loon, as one cannot be/come the Bishop of Anywhere when one is not a bishop in the first place.  Yes, one can be elected, but..

I think that he plays up the layman-can-be-elected card and then begs off on the Bishop of Rome aspect of the papacy, viewing it as only pending, but all the more insists on his essential Supreme Shepherd  of souls status.

Can a shepherd, supreme or otherwise, be of any substantial use in the supernatural care of souls if he cannot even provide the Sacraments instituted by the God-Man for the good of the sheep?

No.

Si tu non es sacerdos et episcopus, non es papa.

Faithful bishops enjoying Apostolic Succession are no more qualified to elect popes in the present scheme of things canonically Catholic

You need think about what you write. If what you say were true, there's NEVER been a Pope.

Those bishops would still not be the required cardinals and the election would still be doubtful.

By what possible standard?

Catholic Tradition is AGAINST laymen troubling their little minds with so-called prophesy

Yet Catholic HAVE 'troubled' themselves, from any number of the Church fathers, to canonized Saints and Popes.

And because of their 'trouble', in this, you have nothing nice to say about the lot of them. True?

They should  oppose the debauching of kids by putative Church authorities

Catholics have always objected to the 'ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ underground railway', to flight from local prosecution, and so on. And Catholics object to this in all other sects, and in the case of secular employees, and so on.

But you still can't bring yourself to say that a church which teaches the opposite of Catholicism, which warns its members that while they might engage in Lutheranism, or paganism, or atheism for that matter, they are absolutely forbidden to look every curiously upon Catholicism, is in fact not The Roman Catholic Church, but rather Roman Protestant.

the figment of the Great Monarch, is in the catechism and the Creed and lowly faithful have been permitted by the priests

And so on, and so forth, and just the gosh-darned heck with all those Catholics that formerly 'troubled' themselves with this.

Gosh - and the darned heck, correct?

Catholic spiritual writers and pastors of souls have traditionally discouraged Catholics even from having any interesrt in private revelations and miraculous events.

Perhaps St John of the Cross wrote on this subject in the most extreme terms.

St Thomas More said that he saw no harm in the laity's reading the Acts of the Apostles, but steered them away from the Apocalypse. He was not showing lack of reverence for that Divine Book itself. I have never known anyone who did. Even atheists. They seem to like that one for some reason. It has given rise to many Hollywood movies out of which they get a kick.

I correctly pointed out that only cardinals under specific circuмstances can elect a true pope as the Official Pontifical Catholic Rules now stand. A gaggle of SSPV and CMRI bishops lacking jurisdiction as to votive lights doing their conclave thing in full regalia in Rome are no more capable of whipping up a Patriarch of the West and Vicar of Christ than Dave Bawden's cleaning lady and auto mechanic. Special circuмstances? Exceptions? Epikeia? Well, then, what's sauce for the sedevacantist bishop goose is sauce for the conclavist Kansan layman gander.

What would happen if ALL the so-called cardinals of the New Pentecost church converted to the Catholic Faith? Are they in SOME sense cardinals now? Could THEY elect a pope? It's an interesting question. So is at what point the matter comprising the imminent vomit of Christ ceases to be hypostatically united to the Word as is His Heart. (Sorry, but it's a reference to a verse on that delicate subject in the Apocalypse.)

"The sting in any rebuke is the truth." David Bawden's ruthless deconstructions of many fuzzy and misty Traditionalist and sedevacantist claims are far from loony. He's a clearer and sharper thinker than any of us. That's his whole trouble. But I'll have to dig up that Chesterton quote on the terrible consistency of the mad. (And I do say that Fighting Pope Michael is a mad construct.) The idea of a Kansan layman's becoming a pope becomes far less loony as he demonstrates with geometric precision and disarming Midwestern dryness the lunacy of considering heretics as Catholics (as do all Traditionalists) and Traditionalists as Catholics (as do most sedevacantists).

I think that he's wrong on this point, and that in one sense we have no choice but to consider Hans Kung and Andrew Greeley and even Josef Ratzinger as Catholics. Could we deny them burial in consecrated ground were we the cemetery wardens and gravediggers and the phones were dead and there was no one to consult anyway and the summer was hot? The way we could someone formally excommunicated by Pope Pius XII? I think not. But I am more interested in receiving as Catholics in all senses those lay and lower clergy schnooks whom they mislead and whose lives they have made living hells.

Dave says he's pope. That I reject off the bat. He also says that there are only a handful of Catholics in the world, and that Trads and Seddies are not among them for reasons he takes from Canon Law, Papal Teaching, Church History, and  their own mouths. That makes me think. The efforts he made to get the word about his conclave make him somewhat less loony too. He sent the Catholic company I worked for his book for free.

I've known so many popes and so many sedevacantist bishops... One of the latter offered to ordain my employer priest over the phone. That might have been invalid due to lack of actual hands. Or maybe not? I don't know. Does anyone here know? But an in-person off-the-cuff ordination would have been valid. I reckon that I could have gotten in line too... Maybe I could have been pope by now. If I found a clear reason why that bishop and his best bishop bud were the only true bishops in the world.

So what have the sedevacantist bishops been waiting for for the last 30 or so years? A lion from the east born of a white horse from the north on a Tuesday to roar something in Latin? Everyone's always waiting.  Just like Archbishop Lefebvre was always waiting for just the right Roman enormity to push him into sedevacantism.

Speaking of unlikely things, the down-to-earth and decorous SSPV and CMRI bishops in this country will NEVER try to pull a stunt like a papal election. But what if ALL the Seddie bishops in the world got together and elected a pope? No one would trust him. And how would some priest in, say, Ohio, be any more Bishop of Rome than some layman in Kansas?

We shouldn't be like ghosts. Ghosts are always mad that they're dead and clank their chains and knock over candle sticks and the like. We shouldn't be so mad that we know deep down that the Catholic situation will remain as it is until Kingdom Come.

There are so many good things that have happened only because Vatican II happened. But they have happened only at the bottom of broken hearts that have maintained humility and good cheer. One of the best things that has happened is that now we can really understand Jesus and the real problems He had in life. We can finally really identify with Him , and feel His pain. A Divine Person Who knows that He is all washed up in this world. Talk about Apocalypse.