Nuns pay and pay, but not money By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Staff Columnist Article Last Updated:10/24/2006 08:34:12 PM MDT

The three nuns have done everything required to stay on probation.

Everything except contribute to what they consider a war machine.

So once more, Jackie Hudson, Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert face jail. And once more, the government gets a chance to do right by religious role models.

The USA blew it the first time. In 2003, it treated a trio of peace-loving Dominican nuns from Grand Rapids, Mich., like terrorists for spilling their blood and banging hammers on a nuclear missile silo in Colorado.

The easy truth is that a world filled with the likes of Hudson, Platte and Gilbert would not include suicide bombers, faith-based bigots or deadly despots.

It's do-over time.

The nuns' refusal to make court-ordered restitution to the Air Force became critical a few days ago when U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn denied the trio's request to use community service to pay back the government.

All three worked for free in different federal prisons. Hudson helped in a prison library. Gilbert knitted clothes and wove blankets for welfare recipients. Platte did chores as a Colorado jail trusty while awaiting trial, then served as a chapel orderly at a federal prison.

"We realize we had to work for a government agency," Platte said.

The nuns consider the prison system part of a government agency.

Since their various releases from lockup, the nuns have continued to give - Hudson with a peace ministry in Washington state, Platte and Gilbert passing out free food to the poor and tending a community garden in Baltimore.

The nuns' supporters have donated time and goods worth hundreds of thousands of dollars across the U.S.

Meanwhile, the trio has abided by travel limits and other probation restrictions.

But they will not pay a military system they consider immoral.

"There is no possible way I could add money to the Air Force budget," said Hudson, who turns 72 next month.

Though she suffered serious asthma attacks while in jail awaiting trial and contracted pneumonia in prison, Hudson will go back if she must.

"Prison is a physically debilitating atmosphere," she said. "But I have to live my beliefs."

So do Platte, 70, and Gilbert, 59.

"We will not pay for war," Gilbert said.

Added Platte: "None of us ever desired to go to prison. We desired to be faithful to God."

That's why none of the nuns has made restitution to the Air Force. In prison, this meant losing privileges, Platte said. Since the three were released, it has meant violating terms of their probation.

Now, Blackburn's order has changed the stakes. The nuns asked to meet with the judge when they came to Denver in April to check in with probation officials. Blackburn, they said, never responded.

His order gave no reason for denying the nuns' alternative restitution plan.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Denver said prosecutors stand by a written filing that defendants must "make restitution to the victim, not the community as a whole." The victim in this case, the feds insist, is the Air Force.

Deciding if or when to take the nuns back to court rests with federal probation authorities, said U.S. attorney's spokesman Jeff Dorschner.

Platte's lawyer, Scott Poland, called that "passing the buck."

"If the U.S. attorney had not objected (to alternative restitution)," Poland said, "there's a good likelihood the judge would have approved."

Probation officials didn't return a call. But the nuns say their relationship with probation officers is excellent.

"If it's up to the people in the trenches - the people who deal with the nuns - I don't think they'll violate their parole," Poland said. "If someone else higher up has a political agenda, I don't know."

Whatever uncertainty the nuns face, two things remain embarrassingly clear:

First, jailing peacenik nuns mocks the war on terror. And second, the only thing Hudson, Platte and Gilbert have not given to their country is the one thing their consciences will never let them give.

Jim Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com .