Bp. Williamson excuses the pope and his cardinals, arguing that they can not help themselves because they are basically insane, and separated from objective reality.  Since these men are so disoriented, through really no fault of their own, (if I understand Williamson's reasoning),  we can go on believing that they are still cardinals, bishops and pope.  He seems to imply that if the pope, the bishops and the cardinals were perceived to be deliberately opposing and denying objective truth, they might, then, lose their "exalted position(s)" in his estimation.
But since they are not "aware that they are not sane," we continue to honor them in those postions, and are instructed to act in charitable obedience towards them.   Yet, not really.  Because Bp. Williamson declares that he will not "associate" with the Conciliar church, as long as it continues in its subjective insanity.  Go figure!
I'm not sure I can cut church leaders, including the Pope, as much slack as Bp. Williamson does.  I am not persuaded that a number of these high churchmen have actually taken leave of their senses.  Rather, I consider them to be conscious, deliberate revolutionaries, bent upon the destruction of Holy Mother Church.  Many of them, including maybe even the Pope, are at least as sane as Luther, Calvin and Marx.  
We may conclude that the Pope acts sincerely (though insanely), in good faith,according to his own lights  But let me serve up one example which seem to put to put the lie to this perception, at least on some level:
 Cardinal Ratzinger read the Third Secret.  He knows exactly what Sr. Lucia wrote and what the true contents of that Secret are.  Yet, he was one of the chief promoters of the so-called "Secret," published in June of 2000.  We know now, beyond reasonable doubt, that Bertone and Ratzinger deliberately held back the full truth of it.  In other words, they lied!  The Pope, to this day, as touching the Third Secret, knows what the "objective" truth is.  Or are we to believe, as a practical application of Bp. Williamson's argument might suggest, that the contents of the Third Secret have undergone some kind of transmogrification in the pope's subjectively delusional mind?    
 

Madmen can indeed put great care into their mad acts.

Church leaders were permissive about reemerging Modernism and all sorts of doctrinal vagaries in the 1950s. They harmed a lot of souls. But that does not compare to the Reign of Terror that occurred when Church leaders started EMBRACING what was far worse than mere heresy or mere apostasy and demanding that all Catholics internalize their absolute Godlessness in the name of Christ and the Holy Spirit under penalty of Mortal Sin.

Forty plus years of it and we still don't get it. Or we still act and speak as though we don't. Godless Commie thug Nikita Khruschev spoke out against the Can-Can with the Voice of the Roman Pontiff. What would have thought of JPII's inculturated Nudie Masses?

Monster Mahony of LA invites some demon-ridden pig with a Roman collar to talk dirty about Jesus and Joseph as part of the church's official Renewal. I know atheists who would without a second thought be incensed and disgusted over such purely Satanistic delectation. I don't believe that I know a single Catholic who does not feel obliged to put a good construction on it and find excuses for the so-called cardinal, if not for the so-called priest. This includes sedevacantists.

At best they attempt to deconstruct the meaning of such a  function of Vatican II Renewal by mixing it in with "wacky" abuses such as altar girls and liturgical dance and making it seem like some progressivist fraternity prank about which the grown-ups can be both displeased and indulgent.

The so-called Conciliar Church's positive PROMOTION of Error and Vice changes everything. It's the difference between having serious problems in the governance of Holy Church (that was the case in the far from glorious reign of Pius XII) and having an Apocalypse and Holy Church only as an arduously and artificially deduced leap of faith.

The overall concept of Openness to Change and Renewal pertains now to the putative Papal Magisterium. Practically speaking, Catholics are bound by Christ to be Open to the Devil. That's the Catholic System. That's the rule of the Catholic game. Unless we are hot shot experts at defusing the trickiest of theological bombshells. But no one becomes such an expert as a Catholic. One becomes such an expert merely as a well-read, intelligent, and reflective human individual with a strong sense of individuality who knows that it is no sin and exquisitely Thomistic to reach God in the last place as well as in the first place, Apocalyptically as well as philosophically, through Reason and private judgment. THEN one can see about there still being a Church as an afterthought when the tricky work of defusing the Catholic bombshell is accomplished.

Reason of mere laymen, private judgment, confidence in one's own instincts and opinions. All the aspects of reality and the Human Condition that are so loudly acclaimed by Traditionalists - NOT, as the kids said in the 1990s.

In any case, the permissiveness of Church leaders in the 1950s should not be confused with the Option for Iniquity adopted by the leaders of the Conciliar Church since 1962.

Any messed-up and strung-out would-be Catholic can say to any leader of the false Church he can't shake because of his futile and fallacious Catholic habits of obedience and docility: "Thou would have no power over me were it not given thee from above."

In the 1950s there was zero power from above in what Modernist priests did and said. On the contrary, there was at least SOME power from above acting against them. The bishops were sound in faith, and so were the sermons and the catechisms. Seminary lectures and articles in priestly reviews maybe not so much.

Mahony's power comes from above. From Christ, in fact. He could give Mother Angelica a good swift kick in the chin and in our innermost souls we would scruple to take her part. Poor Christ. Poor us. I believe that Apocalypse is merely His way of indicating, as a Just Man and a Good Jєω, that that is not really what He is all about, despite all mystical appearances. It is interesting that Apostolic Tradition associates His Office as Judge not so much with His being God as with His being a good man. Certainly a better man than Mahony is.

So he can be objectively insane from the standpoint of the Catholic Faith, and yet subjectively in a kind of good faith.

What utter balderdash!  Faith is above reason, and a man either possesses this supernatural virtue or he does not.  If he does not, he cannot be a member of Holy Church - nor the head thereof.