Not Really Progress

Until 1962, the Catholic canon law clear­ly spelled out pun­ish­ments for priests who were sex­u­al­ly abu­sive in any way. Then, not only were the rules changed to be more secre­tive, but the doc­u­ment itself was sup­posed to be a secret, not ever discussed!

Vat­i­can Aware of Abuse for Cen­turies, Study Says
* Authors use church’s own doc­u­ments to make their case. Crit­ics say mon­ey is the motive.

For exam­ple, in the 4th cen­tu­ry, St. Basil of Cae­sarea set up a detailed sys­tem of pun­ish­ment to deal with cler­ics at his monastery who molest­ed boys. Per­pe­tra­tors were to be flogged and put in chains for six months; they were nev­er again allowed unsu­per­vised inter­ac­tion with minors.

In the 13th cen­tu­ry, Pope Gre­go­ry IX added to church law a dec­la­ra­tion that sex­u­al abuse demand­ed expul­sion from the priest­hood and that per­pe­tra­tors would be turned over to sec­u­lar authorities.