as I understand it (wish I could find the article I read this in....I read it about 2 yrs ago)
The worst offenders went into seminary in the 40’s & 50’s.
Most of the abuse occurred during the 70s & 80s.
Yes and they were very much in the closet until the ‘70s. What gave them their opportunity was the emptying of the seminaries and the defection of so many priests. Needing priests, the bishops allowed the seminaries to relax the rules and take in many candidates who in the early fifties would have been rejected. Some seminaries were so totally controled by gays that normal men were rejected. But straight men were rejected for another reason: they tended to be conventionally devout and theologically orthodox, while the gay priests were more like those that infest the Episcopalian Church, theologically liberal. One reason why confession has declined so radically is that men especially are turned off by the thought of gay priests.