My rosh yeshiva said that goren was a case of two opposing forces inside a person. He said that he learned a lot mitzad echad, but mitzad sheni, had distorted fantasies, would go around blowing shofros, and simply was a victim of the yatzer hora for zionism in a pretty bad way.
There are some rabbis, I’d rather not say their names for their kovod, who fell prey to zionism on different levels, and for them gedolim say not to talk about them unecessarily…for instance, there’s one rov who was 99% frum, but wrote some rabbi kook-ian nonsense about frei jews being great and holy etc.., but this is not in his main, published seforim. Rav Moshe shternbuch considers him a rebbe, even though he’s one of the most staunch anti-zionists of our time. He understands peoples’ frailties.
Another gadol who I spoke to about this rov was rav yitzchok sheiner, because his name appears in the haskomos of the people who put out the sefer containing the aforementioned nonsense. My friends and I got up the courage to simply knock on his door and try to invite ourselves to eat by him on shabbos. He was already beginning to lose his memory at the time, but his learning was on his fingertips. He remembered every word in shas, but couldn’t remember the name of rabbi kook when talking about how the unnamed rov had some ideas that were similar to his. Rav Scheiner told us that he was an ish kadosh, who had a very hard life. He ended up in university, divorced, and was in the holocaust, during which time he had a mental breakdown. Talmidei chachamim bleed, they are human, and rav scheiner’s open and frank descriptions of how good people can be imperfect made a very big impression on me. I think previously, in my mind, if someone erred, he was “upgefreight”, a nobody, not worthy of any kovod.
The reason why I differentiate between people like goren, rabbi kook, and the unnamed rov in the story, is in scope. One gadol said that rabbi kook’s punishment in shomayim will be that they will tell him “kook! Kook! (meaning, “Look” in english), look at what you’ve done; it will pain him to know how much spiritual suffering his methods and ideas have caused klal yisroel. Goren’s damage is already mentioned above in this thread.
The unnamed rov, however, was a victim of circumstance who, on the contrary, was a net positive. He was respected by both the yeshivos and the religious zionists, and definitely improved the standards of halacha that would otherwise be dominated by the gorens and the maimons of the time. while rabbi kook had mostly normative halachik opinions too, this was eclipsed by the hashkafic damage he caused.
The only truly sad part of the unnamed rov’s legacy is that modern morons use his teshuva supporting a mixed kiruv organization(emphasis on kiruv) as some sort of heter to have co-ed schools; much like they abuse the aruch hashulchan’s heter to say shema in front of uncovered hair as some twisted heter for women not to cover their hair.