Aelianus remarked to me the other day that Pope Francis is not just extraordinarily bad in comparison to other popes, but extraordinarily bad in comparison to other erring popes.  The ohters had some famous error which they favoured under pressure (Liberius, Honorius I), or from an affectation of scholarship (John XXII), or bamboozled by some great name.

With Francis it is different.  Everything is thrown into the Bergoglian liquidizer and comes out unrecognizable: Christology, Mariology, the theology of grace, the ten commandments, marriage, the nature of faith, the nature of tradition.  He seems, we might say, to have no supernatural protection at all.  Is this a sign that his election was invalid?

I don’t think we need conclude this.  It is simply that he is not attempting to use his magisterium.  He is not trying, that is, to declare the truth that has been delivered to the saints once for all from the time of the apostles.  But the power to do this is what the magisterium is.

He does not believe that there is such an unchanging revealed truth, and therefore naturally he does not seek to declare it.  And since the divine protection is given to a pope in the exercise of his magisterium, he does not receive it.