@Simon-
A psychological impediment is erected when one is confronted with facts which seem at first to threaten one’s faith, as is the case with many souls who are unable to reconcile the magnitude of the present crisis and all its consequences and implications, with somewhat inaccurate notions concerning infallibility and indefectibility, which, precisely because they are inaccurate, threaten the faith of such souls. The result is hostility and crimethink, as a measure of protective stupidity.
The primary cause of these errors, is rashly pontificating about just how far our Lord could/would go in trying/testing/chastising His Church, declaring the present situation exceeds these subjectively imposed limits (thereby allegedly destroying indefectibility, apostolicity, etc), and arriving at absurd conclusions.
The solution, of course, is exactly the opposite: Accept that we do not know how far the Church can be tested and/or obscured (eg., during the Great Western Schism, there was no recognizable head of the Chur h for 40 years, with the overwhelming majority of the hierarchy siding with one who was later declared an antipope, yet evidently this historical fact did not impugn the Church’s visibility). And had such a sorry state not have actually transpired, today people would say that such a thing could not happen, just as today they say it is impossible that we could have several consecutive antipopes: “It’s against Vatican I’s teaching on perpetual successors!” But if one thinks carefully, an interregnum is not an interruption, and having public heretics as popes (were such a thing possible) is significantly worse than having no popes at all for a while.
For any interested, the WMReview has an interesting article on this very subject right now.
Classic study admits invalid rites would NOT destroy hierarchy