It is imperative to respect the claims of conscience behind the pacifist convictions often associated with the rejection of the modern state. But if Catholic social teaching is going to incorporate nonviolence more fully, it also must develop the connection between nonviolence and modern politics.

One alternative to a disorienting retributive hierarchy … is repentance, offered to the living, not the dead. This is the honest acceptance of one’s own sin that leads to a turning from the destructive habits of assigning greater or lesser guilt to others. The activity of repentance, in turn, becomes the basis for the possibility of reconciliation between God and offender, between offender and the offended.