Comments by the Catholic Church spokesman on child sexual abuse were inappropriate, disingenuous and possibly in contempt of Parliament, MP Frank McGuire said on Monday.

Mr McGuire, deputy chairman of the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled child sexual abuse, said: "Before you've even come before the inquiry it looks as though the church is trying to minimise" the abuse problem.

Mr McGuire criticised the church for taking an umbrella approach to the inquiry but not when it came to compensation or remedies.

Criticising remarks by Father Shane McKinlay that clergy sexual abuse coincided with the social and moral collapse of the 1960s and '70s, including an attempt to lower the age of consent to 12, Mr McGuire said: "Is the church going to try to blame society?"

A Catholic spokesman appeared before the inquiry for the first time when Tim Graham, head of the Hospitallers Order of St John of God, gave evidence. He denied earlier evidence by victims group Broken Rites that there were paedophile rings in the order that gang-raped children, and that a child died after being thrown down stairs, but admitted there had been "deplorable and indefensible" abuse of vulnerable children in homes formerly run by the order.