Sister stuff

Anger is a response to fear of those basics not being met. My experience is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be based in fact. If I’m angry, what’s motivating it? For me, it’ll be needs related to sex, security or society (not in that order). That’s pretty broad and encompasses relationships with others to being ripped of financially, to social status, to having somewhere to live.
Btw, if I have the right person, Catholics have a process to reconcile their wrongs. Instead of coming to you, cap in hand looking for forgiveness, I’d be suggesting that route. He’s got to walk the walk if he’s going to go on about it at every opportunity.

It can work differently for neurodivergent people , people with Asperger’s ect.
Their brain is wired differently than neurotypical people

My teacher has got an adult son with Asperger’s and I have dated men with Asperger’s - I found out when I met their family as other family members also had Asperger’s 
For me it sometimes was like a total different language - maybe also because of mind blindness 
Boundary setting was different

Maybe there are some special resources for people with Asperger’s ect.

My dad came to church late in life. I grew up Catholic and he never went to church, just laid on the couch in a depression most of my childhood (and worked). On very rare occasions, he interacted with me - either helping me ride a bike, taking me fishing or to a show, or on a few occasions yelling at me and scaring me.

He was violent toward my mom and I would hide under a table.

To this day, I have his violent aggression overcoupled with him (and probably men). Long story short, but when I finally faced my escalating driving anxiety, I pulled over one time having a panic attack and tried to explore the dark feeling that was coming up and it was the fear that my dad hated me and wanted to kill me. So there's that.

I stopped having a relationship with him for years out of survival/necessity, but still always longed to have a relationship - mostly with a dad/dad figure.

It was at the start of the pandemic that I did specific therapy to help remove the blocks so I could be in a room with him and not regret it if he died. A car accident later, a huge bout of double-covid pneumonia, and he's still ticking and I've actually been having a relationship with him that's clearly super complex. And I still work on all this in therapy. Most people may have walked away but I guess I have a belief that there's something here I need to explore (and there is).

Anyway, it was around the pandemic I think that he started going to church but it had to be Latin mass as everything else was too modern, and he took my mom from her community, criticizing her ways... which hurt my heart (since my mom was the one who had faithfully gone for her whole life).

His anger is still explosive. I recall one time that we talked about it. When he came after me as an adult and I ran out of the house. He still scares me.

My daughter stood up to him at dinner the other night and her cousins joined her. It was wild to see and I knew that my mother sister and I were super uncomfortable. He told my daughter, "You stick by your family no matter what." And my daughter later laughed to me about that. I'm glad. I'm glad she's free enough in herself to have that perspective and feel safe enough to talk back and later laugh.

My sister later told me that she understood why he was saying what he was but that the girls were perpetuating it by standing up to him. It was like this was normal for her?

Anyway, like I said, I do understand anger and really love what Karla McLaren has to say about it in her book Language of Emotions - and maybe it's even online, but I guess what I don't understand (though I guess I kind of do) is the piles of anger.... my sense is that it is trauma and brain-based. That there's a disorder -- a chronic threat response and a hair trigger toward that like an abused animal. I don't know. But it's just really acute.

So he really hasn’t changed, just added the Church for respectability or insurance. Goodness, what a terrible shame. Being that close to revolution in one’s own life, but not even scraping the surface.
I’m sorry about your own trauma around him and by extension, men. Today, I sat alongside my ex-wife at our daughter’s performance and she cried at a song. I know it’s my behaviour in particular that caused that, and there’s bugger all I can do about it except keep trying to be a good co-parent. It’s the only amends I can make without causing more harm or compounding old trauma. I’d say it’s not his business to cause trauma unchecked either. Strangely enough, my experience with men in adulthood is that they respect people who stand up for themselves, like your daughter, but it’s like being scared of a rabid dog, they can smell it a mile off and it can turn into a terribly abusive situation.