It's perfectly possible to have a genuine relationship with someone who is decades younger (in our case 3 decades, not the 5 of the Vicar and his unofficial Verger) - but I accept it is rare.
In this case the Vicar obviously threw all his eggs in the one basket as, at 78, he probably thought this was his last chance at happiness after a lifetime of hiding his sexuality and living a double life - not to mention living through decades of possibility being criminalised over it.
Yes he was naive and foolish, but which of us hasn't been - to a lesser extent at least?
I'm happy not to be one of those sad, bitter and twisted individuals gloating over the Vicar's naivety and misjudgement whilst indulging their much worse peccadilloes themselves, such as offing boys of questionable mental/behavioural capacity who are (as Frequent would say) "young enough to be their grandchildren", for example.
Thankfully, you'd never get anything like that on SGT of course as everybody is squeaky clean and thus able to disparage and have a good laugh at other people's misfortune