The Catholic Church attempted for nearly a decade to conceal incriminating documents about child sex abuse using a controversial legal tactic that it has since renounced as "inappropriate".

The bid to manipulate "legal privilege" to keep its records from public disclosure was one in a series of controversial measures taken to protect the reputation and assets of the church after complaints about paedophile priests began "coming out of the woodwork" in the 1980s.

A Catholic priest has compared paedophile priests to adulterous women. Credit:Angela Wylie

Internal documents show the Australian Catholics Bishops Conference – a panel comprising the church's senior leaders in Australia – was warned in April 1988 that church records were vulnerable to discovery and public disclosure in the event of civil lawsuits by alleged victims.

The problem would be summarised by Bishop Peter Connors as "too many people are keeping too many records" in 1992, according to a document obtained by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.