"While sexual dalliance among avowed celibate clergymen has been going on for centuries...". 
I cringed, at first read, how callous a generalization: "dalliance" thinking on those relationships that may have  been meaningful between priests and women. Then it hit: the article is about those priests who abandoned friend, lover, and child. Who made a conscious decision which weighed their "affection", responsibility for their action, their son or daughter and chose abandonment. Whatever the "feelings" that enshrouded the relationship during, the stark reality of abandonment renders the crass term "dalliance" so appropriate. 
Abuse of woman; bad enough. Abuse of vow or solemn promise; bad enough.  Abuse of child, of one's own? It adds another dimension to the clerical abuse of children.