God only knows what he did as a priest... people who take advantage of religion and priesthood deserve every bit of punishment they receive, and probably more too.
You are correct. "God only knows what he did as a priest." That leaves you and me out of that knowledge. This man might have been a very moral priest, or he could have been corrupt. But we don't know. Only God knows.
We do know that 25 or 30 years after he left the priesthood, he distributed child pornography. He has admitted at least one of his crimes and will be going to jail.
You are also correct that "people who take advantage of religion and priesthood deserve every bit of punishment they receive, and probably more too." But corrupt priests are nothing new to the church. That is exactly what my tagline is referring to.
I am not Catholic, but I very much appreciate Catholic England of the 13th century. In my quote from Chaucer, he is talking about a corrupt priest. As a Catholic writing for a Catholic audience, Chaucer believed that a priest received something extremely valuable in his ordination that could by analogy be compared to gold. In that respect, the layman can be compared to iron. But if the gold of the priest can rust, what does that say about the iron of the rest of us who are not priests?
We don't know if Ward's gold rusted when he was a priest. Only God knows. But we men of iron do know that Ward's iron as a layman did rust. And that is what is so sad about a man whose politics I disagreed with. There are lots of ways that men of iron can rust. And that is part of the great wisdom of Chaucer and the 13th century in England.