Nobody ever seems to explain to me how proper authority in the Catholic Church continues according to the strict sedevacantist position. I never get a clear answer.
Oh, they wimp out by saying, "God will work a miracle" or "St. Peter will come down and personally pick the next Pope", which amounts to the same thing.
That seems like a cop-out to me, because when you have recourse to, "Well, there could be a miracle!" it means you're out of ideas! You don't see any possibility in the human realm.
See, there's nothing wrong with NOT attempting to explain away the mystery of this Crisis in the Church. Even if we did try to reason about it, we might easily be wrong. Our reason is not infallible. But the Sedevacantists have clearly applied their reason, and have attempted to solve the Crisis mystery completely (with a neat little bow, I might add). But their solution (from human reason) falls short PRECISELY because they can't explain how Authority will come back.
I don't know how this is all going to be resolved either, which is why my realistic and honest position is: "I don't know, and I can't know. I'm just going to keep the Faith and save my soul."
Because the status of the Pope is not a T in the road (do I go left? Or right? I have to choose one of them, and they each involved a hard turn one way or the other!), I go with the DEFAULT (as in, computer software) POSITION. That is to say, we assume he's the Pope until a council declares otherwise.
The Pope question is like a straight road saying "He is the pope" and sedevacantism is a sharp right turn off that road. It's making a decision. If you make no decision, you keep going forward, holding to the default position that he's the pope.
It follows from this, that Catholics won't ever be judged by God for holding to that default position. Now the same can't be said for those who rashly took the reins, and diverted the carriage on a sharp 90 degree turn. Maybe they shouldn't have done this, maybe they should. But how can you blame someone who just rides in the carriage, letting the horses move you along? Unless you know exactly what needs to be done, and where you need to go instead, then why take the reins?
Such taking of the reins is a moral action. Is
not doing anything also considered a moral action? If so, then we're screwed, because we really don't know what to do, and if we're going to be judged for "doing something" either way, even if that "something" is
doing nothing, then how fair is that?