The evidence doesn’t quite go back 1800 years, but there is 1000 year old evidence against them. It isn’t that hard to imagine that it was probably going on before then, too.
“Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been reported as far back as the 11th century, when Peter Damian wrote the treatise Liber Gomorrhianus against such abuses…”
While Liber Gomorrhianus does mention clerical sexual abuse of children, it is for the most part concerned with homosexual acts among monks and priests, and also with (male) clergy engaging in unchastity with nuns or laywomen.
None of these are presented as being common or accepted; rather they are all considered as disqualifying a man from the clergy for at least a period of years.
That said —
> A cleric or monk who persecutes adolescents or children, or who is caught in a kiss or other occasion of indecency, should be publicly beaten and lose his tonsure, and having been disgracefully shaved, his face is to be smeared with spittle, and he is to be bound in iron chains, worn down with six months of imprisonment, and three days every week to fast on barley bread until sundown. After this, spending his time separated in his room for another six months in the custody of a spiritual senior, he should be intent upon the work of his hands and on prayer, subject to vigils and prayers, and he should always walk under the guard of two spiritual brothers, never again soliciting sexual intercourse from youth by perverse speech or counsel.
The evidence doesn’t quite go back 1800 years, but there is 1000 year old evidence against them. It isn’t that hard to imagine that it was probably going on before then, too.
“Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been reported as far back as the 11th century, when Peter Damian wrote the treatise Liber Gomorrhianus against such abuses…”
Source here.
While Liber Gomorrhianus does mention clerical sexual abuse of children, it is for the most part concerned with homosexual acts among monks and priests, and also with (male) clergy engaging in unchastity with nuns or laywomen.
None of these are presented as being common or accepted; rather they are all considered as disqualifying a man from the clergy for at least a period of years.
That said —
> A cleric or monk who persecutes adolescents or children, or who is caught in a kiss or other occasion of indecency, should be publicly beaten and lose his tonsure, and having been disgracefully shaved, his face is to be smeared with spittle, and he is to be bound in iron chains, worn down with six months of imprisonment, and three days every week to fast on barley bread until sundown. After this, spending his time separated in his room for another six months in the custody of a spiritual senior, he should be intent upon the work of his hands and on prayer, subject to vigils and prayers, and he should always walk under the guard of two spiritual brothers, never again soliciting sexual intercourse from youth by perverse speech or counsel.