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Good morning. The Moors murders have hung like a menacing cloud over Greater Manchester for half a century. It was not just that the victims were so young; not just that the manner of killing was so cruel; not just that the chief perpetrator showed no indication of remorse for the rest of his life; somehow the worst thing of all was that, by continuing to use the location of the bodies as the last instrument of power that he had, the murderer extended the agony such that the torture has lasted for 50 years until the very day of his death on Monday. We all know ourselves to be capable of thoughts and actions that are unworthy, shameful and sometimes bad. These we traditionally call sin. Sin is choosing to live in a narrow world of our own devising, and wilfully refusing the limitless world that God is offering. When challenged to account for our sin, we may say, bewildered, ‘I don’t know what came over me’; we may respond, penitently, ‘I was foolish and selfish’; or we may say, cynically, ‘Everyone does it, I meant no harm; no one was really hurt, others are worse than me.’ But these ghastly killings seem to have a different quality about them – a quality that turns the stomach and induces revulsion. The word ‘sin’ doesn’t seem adequate. Instead we use the word ‘evil.’ To say ‘evil’ isn’t just to say ‘sin’ with a loud voice. What transforms sin into evil is losing what all our responses to sin have in common – a recognition of shame, an assumption that this was an uncharacteristic lapse that won’t happen again, a degree of remorse. Evil differs from sin on two counts: it is, first, something regarded by its perpetrators not as shabby and dishonourable but as justifiable or even noble; and, second, it’s not just a one-off inadvertent mistake but an active, intentional programme. By both these criteria, the Moors murders go beyond sin and merit the description ‘evil.’ Evil is, in the end, a colossal lie. Sin means briefly participating in that lie. Evil means letting that lie become all the truth we know. You can’t forgive evil. That’s a category mistake. You can only forgive sin. You can only reckon with evil by breaking it down into individual acts of sin; whereupon those acts of sin can be forgiven. And that’s why refusing to show remorse and withholding the location of the bodies are so distressing. They prevent the process by which evil is dissolved into sin, and by which sin can cease, and recompense be made; and the slow journey of acceptance and healing can, after all this time, begin.