Note to a sedeprivationist

Your reasoning is straight forward, but there is an underlying premise that I can't get behind:

The Church has never been a Church of 'law alone' anymore than it is a Church of 'scripture alone'. I don't think the 1917 canon law has more authority than historical Tradition as a whole (although I get that it is a written summary of precisely that). The Tradition is a living thing though, not just the words, and that fact is what allows our doctrines to develop (i.e. the language of Trinitarian theology took nine-hundred years to solidify) without changing the doctrine in essence. Sedeprivationism seems too much like an essential change, and not a development. I know you would probably argue that the instantiations of Vatican II, mostly the Novus Ordo liturgy, are more of a change than Sedeprivationism, but I think we can, and we are in the Trad-movement, preserving the Latin Mass and scholastic theology without rejecting the post-Vatican II clergy.

An essential paradox of our faith is the co-habitation between the Divine Spirit and human letter. Canon law is the letter, but the Pope in communion with the Bishops and the faithful are the Spirit. If the Pope, Bishops, and faithful together think Francis is Pope than I don't feel that I have the authority myself to disagree. And in my opinion, the law can't interpret or impose itself. The law is dead. It died with Judaism. We are beyond mere law now. That is clear from the New Testament. The Holy Spirit leads us, not mere text (but not to the exclusion of texts either). Perhaps I am merely too sinful or weak to accept His promptings, but I just don't see the Holy Spirit leading me to a reform that denies the priesthood and sacraments to the overwhelming majority of those who call themselves Catholic. Words are the human tools for the communication of reality but not incarnations of Reality themselves. As you said in your book, the Church invites us to this non-binary reasoning, that is, to embrace of paradox, beginning with hypostatic union of the Divine and human natures in the person of Christ. In the logic of this paradox, I still say yes, the Pope Francis Church is infiltrated by satanists, and yes, the Pope Francis Church is Christ's One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Body. Both are true.

I think the response of "Who am I to judge?" bears further reflection. Even when we, like the apostles, can't see beyond the coming Crucifixion, we still say "to whom else shall we go?" The primary authority of judgement is embodied and ecclesial (living people not 'dead' words). As far as us laymen are concerned, Christ says to judge by the fruits. I understand that this is where our present difficulty resides, but on the ground level (not what is portrayed in media) the Catholic Church is still bearing the same fruits of conversion and charity that it always has. Its the same one fruit and it comes from the same One Vine. Everything great in our world has come out of the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and it has a recognizable historical continuity. The infiltration is bad, but not so bad as to have destroyed that recognizable Catholic Body. It's a very small percentage of the hierarchy that are evil, even if they tend to conglomerate at the higher ranks. The large majority of the clergy and the Catholic faithful are true enough to historical Catholicism as I have studied it and lived amongst these people for thirty years. There is always a spectrum of sinners, from the holy souls to the average tradie to the ignorant liberal to the all out satanist. The wheat and the chaff must grow together. For some reason, God wants Judas Iscariot to be a part of the Twelve. I believe time will lop the Judas' off, as it has lopped off many heretics within the Church throughout history. And the final judgment will be Christ's, in the end.
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I don't deny the seriousness of the problems with the Church, I just think the reform has to come from within a hierarchy that has historical continuity with the Apostles, and that is what I believe the traditional Catholic movement is all about. Ora pro nobis.