The recruitment definitely happens. But why do you think that there are so many pedophile issues in Churches?

It's not a case of not promoting degeneracy. It's s case of extremely pious types who see sex as an evil and attempt to repress the basic human urge to mate as something wrong rather than simply being aware of the fact that teenagers being frisky with each other is a normal part of human development. The sexual repression comes about because the more cultish an organization the more likely they are to attempt to harness the basic biological urges of humans in order to control the members (and identify and expel those whom are not so easy to control) which is why you see most religions making a bunch of strict dietary rules some of which are quite arbitrary, enforcing fasts, identifying any kind of sexual relationship that does not have the blessing of the organizing body as sin, etc. They'll go do far as to say that two people in a a long term exclusive monogamous heterosexual relationship are living in sin simply because they have not gone through the official ceremony where the priest can get their piece of the pie for both social control and financial reasons.

Getting into the weeds with very religious types that see all of modern society as evil they go so far as to prevent their children from having any platonic relationships with the opposite sex outside of strictly controlled and chaperoned environments. There was this whole trend of extremely conservative christians decrying the concept of dating, not casual sex but merely the act of inviting someone of the opposite sex out to coffee so they can evaluate their potential suitability as their future spouse, as a western evil to be replaced with parental supervised "courtship rituals" or as are more commonly referred to as arranged marriages. Now the concept as a whole isn't entirely evil and there are cultures where that is the norm. But certainly not in the west.

So when you take kids and you raise them with counter cultural morality codes many of which are arbitrary and prevent them from forming normal relationships with the opposite sex due to moralistic repression, it leads to very bizzare behaviors. For example there's a tendency among young Catholics to engage heavily in anal sex as teenagers because it "doesn't count", as a consequence of the various catholic doctrines surrounding birth control and the act of sex being appropriate only in a procreative context.

Couple this with the internet, parents inability to recognize the new social dynamics forming there, and the children seeking outlets for their sexual frustrations in ways that are not going to get them "in trouble" and you've got a recipe to create some weird behaviors. And it does make the kids vulnerable to groomers absolutely. Just look at the issue of pedophiles in the priesthood. You think that normally well adjusted healthy men are going to be seeking a position that calls for celibacy in a religion that explicitly promotes marriage as a good thing? Will sexually repressed gay men that hate themselves see that as a problem when they believe their desires are sinful anyway? Put them in a situation where they have trust and contact with young boys. Especially with the whole confession box system where they get all the gay people coming to them talking about their sinful proclivities? How can that not end up with a bunch issues with pedophilia?

Consider the issues in rural areas with "sheep shagging" throughout history. Consider the historical accounts of weird orgies or the homosexual rape gangs in the ancient middle east. There's all sorts of examples of degeneracy we can find throughout human history. It's naturally repressed by normal people because they well understand the dangers of copy cats and social contagions but the historical records are there.

Sex isn't a bad thing. In fact it's a completely normal and essential part of human biology. Once people start interfering with the natural expression of that in society you start to get very strange behaviors come out of it.

The furries have existed for quite some time as a fetish and if you want to look at their history you can find some fairly informative videos on YouTube detailing the formation and the eventual drama that ensued between the "I like drawing cute animals" and the "I am a sex addict and borderline zoophile" wings of the furry "community".

Almost every self-identified furry I knew in college was autistic, or from a very sheltered background. The ones who were very open about it were generally exhibitionists as well and tended to be dangerously tempting the fine line between sexual assault and free public expression. Which is what you see online. The normal ones didn't talk about it or make it their public identity because they understood that not everyone wants to participate in their fetish.

Of course it runs parallel with pedophilia and I don't think a lot of people are aware of that. It is similar to Anime in that regard. The pedophiles use characters from children's shows in sexual contexts as a way to groom the children. Any kind of rule 34 google search will confirm this.