Unionists have further criticised Fr Alec Reid who has said he believes the IRA was not behind the Northern Bank robbery.
Fr Reid recorded an interview with BBC Northern Ireland's Hearts and Minds programme which was broadcast on Thursday night amid the furore over his claim that unionists were like Nazis.
In the interview, recorded earlier this week, Fr Reid said he accepted IRA assurances that it did not mastermind the £26.5 million (€38.5 million) Northern Bank robbery last December.
"On that issue their leadership has denied it," he said. "I believe absolutely they had no truck to do with it."
He also said he believed that the IRA viewed itself as being at war with British forces and that it was not involved in organised criminality. However, he conceded that individual IRA members might have been involved in crime.
"The whole spirit of that would be a betrayal of the whole meaning of the republican movement," he said. "In their own minds they are fighting a war."
Fr Reid added that the absence of an acceptable policing service in certain areas had fostered crime, although he condemned paramilitary-style so-called punishment beatings of those believed responsible for anti-social activity.
"There is an absence of a police force that has functionality in nationalist districts, and people are going around who are raping, who are breaking into houses, who are joy-riding and knocking people down, who are terrorising the elderly people," he said.
"There are drugs of course. Those people, whoever they are, will do something about it themselves."
The remarks prompted the DUP to assert that the Clonard monastery priest, who was instrumental in bringing about the 1994 IRA ceasefire, had "totally, utterly lost it" and could not be viewed as a reliable witness of IRA decommissioning.
Ian Paisley jnr claimed: "He is in denial about criminality and if he is in that sort of denial there can be little credibility in what he says or what he claims to have seen," he said.
"If he had not made the Nazi comment [ on Wednesday], these comments alone would have struck at his credibility."
North Belfast Ulster Unionist Assembly member Fred Cobain said no one had the right to carry out paramilitary-style attacks.
"There is no justification for this type of action and people should not be trying to even explain it. It is wrong and Fr Reid should know that. He is a priest."
"The danger of comments like these is that they are used to legitimise this type of activity."
Fr Reid has apologised for his comparison of unionists and Nazis made at a public meeting, claiming he was provoked and had lost his temper.
The Rev Harold Good, a former Methodist president who accompanied Fr Reid as they witnessed decommissioning by the IRA, said he accepted Fr Reid's apology and understood how he had felt provoked by hostile unionists at the public meeting.
However, both unionist parties have claimed that Fr Reid's remarks both at the public meeting and on the BBC detract from his credibility as a reliable witness of IRA decommissioning.