To the Editor:

In “For Veterans, a Path to Healing ‘Moral Injury’ ” (The Stone, Sunday Review, Dec. 10), Aaron Pratt Shepherd creates a false dichotomy between forgiveness and recompense.

Forgiveness can profoundly alleviate moral injury, and includes confession, remorse and recompense in its full form. But while recovery for the guilty begins with forgiveness, it does not end there.

It requires involvement from those who have been harmed. Recompense to a damaged community is not possible for the same reason: Damage was done to strangers long dead and in a far distant land.

No single fix exists for moral injury. While some veterans feel conflicted loyalties, they cannot simply return their loyalty either to childhood faith or military values. They can feel alien in their families and even to themselves because they experience a disruption in their core sense of being a decent human being.