Justice that has failed to protect a man’s right becomes restitution when the deed of wrong is done.  Restitution therefore that is based on the natural right every man has to have and to hold what is his, to recover it, its value or equivalent, when unduly dispossessed, supposes an act of injustice, that is, the violation of a strict right.  This injustice, in turn, implies a moral fault, a moral responsibility, direct or indirect; and the fault must be grievous in order to induce a grave obligation.  Now, it matters not in the least what we do, or how we do it, if the neighbor suffer through a fault of ours.  If any human creature sustains a loss to life or limb, damage to his or her social or financial standing, and such injury can be traced to a moral delinquency on our part, we are in conscience bound to make good the loss and repair the damage done.  To do evil is bad; to perpetuate it is immeasurably worse.  To refuse to remove the evil is to refuse to remove one’s guilt; and as long as one persists in such a refusal, that one remains under the wrath of God.

Restitution concerns itself with things done or left undone, things said or left unsaid; it does not enter the domain of thought.  Consequently, just as an accident does not entail the necessity of repairing the injury that another sustains, neither does the deliberate thought or desire to perpetrate an injustice entail such a consequence.  Even if a person does all in his power to effect an evil purpose, and fails, he is not held to reparation, for there is nothing to repair.  As we have said more than once, the will is the source of all malice in the sight of God; but injustice to man requires material as well as formal malice; sin must have its complement of exterior deed before it can be called human injustice.

We deem it unnecessary to dwell upon the gravity of the obligation to make restitution.  The balance of justice must be maintained exact and impartial in this world, or the Almighty will see that it is done in the next.  The idea that God does not stand for justice destroys the idea that God exists.  And if the precept not to commit injustice leaves the guilty one free to repair or not to repair, that precept is self-contradictory and has no meaning at all.  If a right is a right, it is not extinguished by being violated and if justice, is something more than a mere sound, it must protect all rights whether sinned against or not.

It might be convenient for some people to force upon their conscience the lie that restitution is of counsel rather than of precept, under the plea that it is enough to shoulder the responsibility of sin without being burdened with the obligation of repairing it, but it is only a soul well steeped in malice that will take seriously such a contention.  Neither is restitution a penance imposed upon us in order to atone for our faults; it is no more penitential in its nature than are the efforts we make to avoid the faults we have fallen into in the past.  It atones for nothing; it is simply a desisting from evil.  When this is done and forgiveness obtained, then, and not till then, is it time to think of satisfying for the temporal punishment due to sin.