If the answers were so clear why are there a billion Catholics who are in the Novus Ordo? Why are there a million Catholics who are in the SSPX? Why are there a few dozen thousand sedevacantists all split into seperate warring factions who cannot even agree on which Masses are acceptable to go to and which missal they should use? It is certainly not clear at all. I think Bishop Sanborn and Father Cekada and Bishop Williamson and Bishop Pivarunas and Father Jenkins are all very bright men but they are all opposed to each other on key issues. So where are the answers?

I am not going to respond to you Bumphrey. As I said in the other thread I am ignoring you.

I still think there are some problems with the theory which I try to point out but I do not think I am very good at making my points.

The Catholic Church MUST exist someplace since it cannot be extinguished, so the true church must be either in the Novus ordo, SSPX, or with the sedevacantists. Saying, "each position has its own problems" is to imply everyone is in error and that truth cannot be found anywhere on the earth, which is absurd. One of them, and ONLY one of them, holds the truth. You need to find out which one it is and put complete faith behind them.

I am not satisfied with your points. I believe the sedevacantists have good arguments against the Novus Ordo, but I do not think they have good arguments FOR the sedevacantists being the Church. The Church has to be one holy catholic and apostolic and infallible and indefectible and it has to have jurisdiction and the power to bind and loose and govern and teach the faithful and it has to be lead by Bishops sent by the Church and it should have a Pope or at least the power to elect a Pope which all submit to. In my opinion these are all problems for sedevacantism. That is why I believe if a form of sedevacantism is true it would make more sense if there were a true Pope with a true hierarchy in hiding such as in the Siri thesis. But I have no evidence that this is true. Some sedevacantists argue that part of the Novus Ordo is still the Church, but none of them actually know where this part of the Novus Ordo is and which bishops it is composed of, nor do they follow this part of the Novus Ordo and they are not in any meaningful communion with this part of the Novus Ordo as if it really were the Church.

I referred you not long ago to the second-to-last chapter of "Liberalism is a Sin", but I really think you need to read it again carefully in light of what I am going to say now...

Just because one is a "card-carrying Catholic", so to speak, does not make what he personally believes is automatically OK, nor is it some kind of "immunity-from-criticism" card. A Catholic, though technically still in the Church, can hold dangerous beliefs that harm others. In proportion to the danger and influence, we should condemn their error, even up the point of calling them heretics and keeping away from them. This is what was done in Catholic history. The day before Fr. Martin Luther was excommunicated, he was a Catholic. Yet, it was appropriate to shun him for the danger he was. The same with the Arian clergy before they were officially condemned by the Church. The Arians, regardless of whether they had the true Sacraments and whether an individual priest didn't sermonize about their one error, the direct association with the error was enough to completely shun them and risk bodily harm in the mountains to have the Mass.

'Believing a man is a true pope and totally shunning him and his bishops' is inconsistent in conviction, and its consequences are very seriously damaging to the faith of others. A prime example of this was when St. Paul publicly criticized St. Peter. This was God's working to keep the head of the Church from error before it spread from a local problem to the Church. It a Providential working of the Infallibility of the Church. There is difference of opinion whether St. Peter was guiltless, or whether it was a venial sin, but the point is, when you read the words of St. Paul in Scripture, regardless of intention, the objective serious consequences of failure to act consistently on a belief should be excoriated with strong language to protect others from the same mistake.

St. Peter was having the Jews and Gentiles eat separately. This was at variance with his conviction. Here are the strong words of St. Paul in Galatians 2:11-18 (my emphasis):

"But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that some came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them who were of the circuмcision. And to his dissimulation the rest of the Jews consented, so that Barnabas also was led by them into that dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all: If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as the Jews do, how dost thou compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? We by nature are Jews, and not of the Gentiles sinners. But knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ; we also believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. But if while we seek to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners; is Christ then the minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build up again the things which I have destroyed, I make myself a prevaricator."