Sedevacantists have a massive internet presence, many sedes seem to be terminally online. I'll be watching a random YouTube video of someone playing a game and on the scoreboard I'll see someone with a feeneyite sede website.
I'd love to see demographic data on sedevacantism, but it's probably pretty difficult to gather. It def seems like the phenomena is enabled by the internet, and demonstrates the same kind of ideological radicalization to be found in other political/cultural domains.
I'm not Pope Francis's biggest fan, but even a cursory look into ecclesiastical history reveals that the stuff happening nowadays is mild compared to what's come before. It breaks my heart to see people who are reacting so strongly against modernism embody modernism so thoroughly by insisting that the "now" is so tremendously unique and special from "the past". To the point that it's OK to ignore that history, because what is happening now is unprecedented. I think this willful disconnection from history/context/embeddedness/belongingness is essentially what modernism is, and people are low-key starting to figure out that the result of this mindset is mostly depression and misery. There's a lot of money and influence to be had by boosting this mindset, but that crap has never been known to make people happy.
That negative self-conceit (i.e. "nowadays is the worst") is still self-conceit, and manifests itself in a fetishism/idolatrazation of the "the past". It's all very strange, but I can understand the allure.
I am sympathetic with people who don't appreciate how Pope Francis has done everything, though much less so now. The vast majority of issues people take with him, my past self included, have turned out to be manipulations of the truth or outright fabrications. A lot of media from liberal western nations do everything they can to portray the pope as sharing their values when often thats not the case, but people who are motivated against him will believe it without actually looking in to things. Nine times out of ten when there has been a controversy the reality is actually mundane. The curse of mass media, I suppose.
> ...but even a cursory look into ecclesiastical history reveals that the stuff happening nowadays is mild compared to what's come before.
I think a look at history is interesting because many of the sedevacantist arguments are built upon them believing in the "historical (traditional)" teachings, yet are often warping reality. Quite unfortunate since it takes a massive amount of time to actually look at many of the claims that get made since examples and arguments spanning hundreds of years can get referred to in a matter of seconds.
This is list of ways that Pope Francis behaved differently from how a narrow section of catholics would prefer for him to act. Sucks that catholicism seems to be too difficult for people to swallow. There is always a temptation to dumb the message down, but that should be resisted.
