Agree.  What's going on the church is a whole host of theological extremes all rolled into one -

a.  heretics claiming the papal office
b.  popes becoming heretics after election
c.  *apparent* corruption of the magisterium
d.  *apparent* corruption of the catechisms, sacraments, etc
e.  etc etc

It's much bigger than just the 'papal question'.

Yes, I agree.  I'm just saying it's much bigger than that.  Hypothetically, if every *real* Catholic in the world (probably about 30% of all catholics) agreed that V2 was a sham and that all V2 popes were fake, that only solves the problems in the Church theoretically.  Practically speaking, God has still allowed the Church to be infiltrated with up to 50% of all the clergy who are freemasons intent on destroying Her (with the rest of the 50% of the clergy not sure how to solve the problems because they don't control the leadership positions), and the practical issues of the new mass, new sacraments, new catechisms, etc still remain.


In other words, even if most of a country realizes that their govt is illegitimate communists, the practical problems of a bad govt remain.

. . .

There's absolutely nothing "ridiculous" about this, and with this comment we have yet another armchair poster here deriding the work of arguably the top theologian in the Church before Vatican II based on a gross oversimplification of it.

Whatever you think of it, it's far preferable to your heretical assertion that "actual" papal authority can corrupt the Magisterium, the Mass, the cult of the saints, and everything else those scoundrels have corrupted.  I'd rather be a sedeprivationist than a purveyor of some variation on Protestantism, Old Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is precisely what the Prots claimed, that the Church had become corrupt, and what the Old Catholics claim, that the Church had departed from Tradition, and what the Eastern Orthodox claim, that the Pope has some "primacy of honor," i.e. that it suffices to pay lip service to him.

Of course, while I agree with sedeprivationism being the most rational position, I don't believe that's the actual explanation for what's happened to the Church.  I believe that these men have not been material popes either, that Cardinal Siri had been elected the legitimate pope and remained thus until his death in 1989.  By then there were few Cardinals left who had been appointed by Pius XII, the last legitimate pope to appoint Cardinals, and also that it's highly doubtful that Ratzinger and Bergoglio were valid bishops.

I'd rather be a sedeprivationist than a purveyor of some variation on Protestantism, Old Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is precisely what the Prots claimed, that the Church had become corrupt, and what the Old Catholics claim, that the Church had departed from Tradition, and what the Eastern Orthodox claim, that the Pope has some "primacy of honor," i.e. that it suffices to pay lip service to him.

You're not paying "lip service to him," because it's not "him." Right. Got it. We've had 5 or 6 "not hims" in the seat over the last 55 years.

There's an inherent contradiction between the "indefectibility" of the united Roman Catholic hierarchy - which we both admit is the true successors of the Apostles and the rulers in Christ's true Roman Catholic Church - and the Conciliar Church. You resolve it by a factual end run around the facts by claiming it's not "fact" because it's all illusion: popes are not popes, bishops are not bishops, etc. Fine. I resolve it by looking to Scripture, and finding that this reality, these popes and bishops given us by Providence, accords with what God has said in the Scriptures He has given us. We both know that we have heretics and apostates governing the Church of Christ, sitting in authority. I find your "resolution" ridiculous and palpably spitting in the face of reality; you find my "resolution" - God said His Holy Catholic Church would be given false shepherds according to His just will and judgment - heretical Old Catholicism.

Yet the points I make about the "Conti theory," i.e., your theory of indefectiblity (and, yes, the indefectibility taught by the pre-V2 theologians) not holding are not rebutted by you. And that main point being, according to that theory and the one you profess to hold to, the indefectibility of the Church is GONE because that theory requires a hierarchy with the true power of jurisdiction to "command" and govern Christ's sheep. That hierarchy being gone, the theory evaporates into the void - such is my contention. 

You resolve it by a factual end run around the facts by claiming it's not "fact" because it's all illusion: popes are not popes, bishops are not bishops, etc. Fine. I resolve it by looking to Scripture ...

Precisely.  What was "said" was nothing but a gratuitous assertion made by someone who wasn't competent to even make the assertion in the first place.  And the authority of a poster factors in as well.  Bishop Guerard des Laurier forgot more theology in one afternoon than most of us have in total, and it takes some kind of hubris to dismiss it with a sentence, deriding it as absurd and ridiculous.  Everyone's entitled to disagree, and no one is being forced to accept his Thesis, but it takes quite some audacity to dismiss the thinking of arguably the top theologian in the Church before Vatican II as absurd and ridiculous.

Did I say, "Scriptures"? Uh oh. Here comes the Great Bugbear, a Catholic citing Scripture "like a Protestant."

Still losing.

Think about it. Maybe you'll be able to address the substance of the argument some day.

There is very little substance to your "argument", your private interpretation of Scripture in contradiction of Catholic ecclesiology.  What little substance you've actually presented has been refuted.

With regard to the "substance" of your "argument" against sedeprivationism, it consisted or an arrogant dismissal of the position as absurd/ridiculous, where you could have a pope without authority, betraying your ignorance of even the most basic fundamentals of the Thesis, namely, that it's more akin distinguishing between an pope-elect and a pope.  It's analogous to the condition of a layman who had been elected to the papacy and accepted, but before he received episcopal consecration.  There's an impediment there to the exercise of certain aspects of papal authority that cannot be exercised by anyone other than a bishop.