To answer just one of your remarks for now (more in a later post).
Thus addressing your remark: “You can’t mentally convict a Pope of heresy and then just decide that he is therefore not Pope, ...But for it to be binding, it has to be done officially and ratified by a Pope and Council...”
Binding is taken care of by God. I can live my life freely based on what God has bound as long as I am aware of it. A manifest heretic cannot be pope and is already judged by God as such.
The expression of my opinions are important to the Church, for it can be at times through the assistance of a layman’s or a combination of movements exhibited by the flock that the Church comes to declare something as binding. (Just as the bleating of the sheep can call to the attention of the shepherd that an enemy has infiltrated the flock.)
It is thus, that as I attend faithfully the Mass as it has been said properly for centuries by the Church, said by a Priest ordained in the apostolic line of succession, yet while not accepting imposters as pope, that I become a sign to the Church such that she may soon declare some official pronouncements against recent claimants to the chair, all with the aid of my “bleating”!
How many sheep must be eaten before a sheep is allowed to bleat out its alarm at the presence of a false shepherd? Must it await permission from the shepherd to bring something to his attention (or doesn’t it always have his permission, as in “PRAY always.”)?
Good point. Before the Church can declare in these sorts of cases, each individual clergy would need to make a private judgment about the matter as well. We have made a private judgment on the matter and have based it on Catholic Church teaching.
And no one is binding opinions here.