The film Priest was a controversial work which delved perhaps too deeply for some audiences into issues of child abuse and dysfunctional behavior not only among priests but within the family. The abusive father, Phil, gives a detailed and even academic defense of the incest he practices. The subject is introduced into the film by his daughter, who confesses to the priest that her father makes her "do things." It is evident that she is very troubled by this and that it has affected her life. It is known that those who are abused tend to become abusers themselves, which means not only that she might one day be an abuser, but that her father may have been abused himself as a child and so is carrying this behavior over into the next generation. The development of this sort of behavior has been approached in different ways by theorists such as freud, Kohlberg, and others, all trying to explain the reason why this behavior develops and what it means to those affected by it. The character of the abuser in the movie Priest is an interesting case study who can be analyzed using methods developed by these theorists.
The first reaction of the priest is to have the girl tell her father that this has to stop and that the priest has said so. He also tells the girl not to tell her mother, who does not know.
It is clear that the mother does not know, and Phil, the father, is completely unrepentant. Phil is an extremely arrogant man who has convinced hismelf that he is not doing anything that everyone would not like to do if only they were as courageous and self-assertive as he is. His attitude is entirely self-centered, for every word he utter regarding the matter shows how his own pleasure is paramount and how he is making a statement for himself against the weakness of the rest of the world. More than this, he insists that there is no pathology involved at all and that while some might be sick who indulge in incest, he is not one of ...