These were systemic abuses within the Catholic Church:

Nepotism involved granting important church positions to the illegitimate children and family members of bishops, cardinals and popes.

Simony usually involved the sale of church positions and of indulgences.

Catholic Answer

Nepotism is addressed below in the quote from the Modern Catholic Dictionary. It was previously a problem in the Church and involved the preferment based on blood or family relationship rather than merit. Simony has also been a problem, it is the selling of anything sacred (sacraments, objects of devotion, or Church offices) for money.

The Catechism addresses simony in paragraphs 2118 and 2121 which address the fact that simony is one of the ways to break the First Commandment.

In most cases that would ordinarily fall under the sin of simony (see below for an explanation), the Church has forestalled most cases of lay simony. For instance to sell anything, like a rosary, or other object of devotion that one owns that has a blessing, the thing automatically loses its blessing if it is sold. This is why you will see a warning that an object must be blessed again if you buy it. Other ways in which you might transgress this, would be offering something to a priest to convince him to hear your confession or give you Holy Communion. Anytime you reduce something sacred that belongs to God to a financial (or other remunerative) transaction, you have committed the sin of simony. Major cases of simony would incur an automatic excommunication under the old Code, and is mentioned several times in the new Code, for instance:

Can. 1380 A person who celebrates or receives a sacrament through simony is to be punished with an interdict or suspension.

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

Simony (from Simon Magus, Acts 8:18). The deliberate intention of buying and selling or otherwise trafficking in sacred things. It is of two kinds: simony of divine law is buying and selling things intrinsically spiritual, e.g.,indulgences, or temporal things inseparable from spiritual, e.g., benefices; and simony of ecclesiastical law, which is buying and selling temporal things attached to spiritual, or exchanging spiritual things for spiritual, or even in certain circumstances temporal for temporal. Those guilty of simony in ecclesiastical offices incur ipso facto excommunication reserved to the pope simpliciter.

fromModern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

Simony. A sacrilege that consists in buying and selling what is spiritual in return for what is temporal. In simony the person tries to equate material things, such as money, with spiritual things, such as divine grace, and treats the latter as though he or some other human being had full ownership of what really belongs to God. The term "simony" originated with the biblical account of Simon Magus, who sought to purchase from St. Peter the spiritual power derived from the imposition of hands and the invocation of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:18). Simony includes both agreements that are illicit by divine law and those which the law of the Church forbids as greater protection and reverence for spiritual goos. Thus to promise prayers only in exchange for a certain sum of money is simony forbidden by divine (natural) law. To confer sacred orders or obtain some position of authority in the Church in return for money or its equivalent is simony forbidden by ecclesiastical law. When simony is against the divine law, it is always a grave sin. Its gravity in other cases depends on the serious nature of what is bought or sold, and on the degree of scandal given. (Etym. Latin simonia, after Simon Magus.)

fromModern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

Nepotism. Preferment in ecclesiastical practice based on blood or family relationship rather than merit. Applied especially to the conferral of Church offices. Historically nepotism plagued the Church for centuries, was practiced by some of the popes, many bishops, and was one of the factors that led to the legislation of celibacy in the Western Church and to the protestant reformation. The most important legislation against nepotism was the bull Romanum decet Pontificem in 1692, of Pope Innocent XII. (Etym. Latin nepos, nephew.)

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