At the end of "Conviction," the documentary about the three Dominican sisters sent to federal prison for their 2002 peace demonstration at a Weld County nuclear missile site, a clip from President Reagan's second inaugural address appears almost hauntingly.

"We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth," the then-president says.

His words stand in stark contrast to those of the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who appears throughout the film calling the women "terrorists."

It's just one of the delicious ironies in the story of Jackie Hudson, Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte that premiered Sunday at Regis University. The sisters attended the gala along with filmmakers Brenda Fox, Mary Casper and Robin Koenigsberg, and more than 300 supporters. It was the first time the three Catholic nuns have been together in Colorado since their sentencing in July 2003.

The women also are scheduled to meet with their parole officer to present their plan for an alternative to paying the court-ordered $3,082 in restitution.

In lieu of payment to the government, they are offering the combined 148 years of service they have already devoted to the community; thousands of hours of counseling, teaching and other services to the prison system during their various periods of incarceration; and more than $600,000 that they have raised over the past year to support "life-giving" services, including an inner-city literacy program in St. Louis, soup kitchens across the country, homeless shelters, battered women's shelters, construction of a school in Africa, and relief to the victims of the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

"We have told our probation officers that as a matter of conscience we cannot pay the restitution," not even under the $25-a-month payment plan proposed by the courts, Hudson said.

It's not happening. They will not send money to support the war machine. No way.

They smile beatifically when they say that.

The women are immovable, rooted deep in their convictions, unbowed, yet eager to embrace their persecutors.

They say they pray every day for the judge, the prosecutors, the prison guards, the president whose policies they consider crimes against humanity, even Haggard. And they thank heaven for the new documentary about their work.

"I'm humbled," said Gilbert. "I still think we're ordinary people, common people."

It's their message that is extraordinary, they say.

"I hope people will come to understand it," said Platte.

On the day when they cut the lock on the fence surrounding the Minuteman III missile site, chanted, prayed, spilled their blood on the ground and symbolically turned weapons into plowshares by banging small hammers on the concrete silo, it was not civil disobedience like so many have assumed. "It was an act of civil resistance," Platte said.

"We resisted the crimes of the government. It was symbolic nonviolent civil resistance.

"We should not have gone to prison at all."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Brown, who also appears in the film, disagrees. He says the women were charged with felonies not so much because their crimes were heinous, but to teach them a lesson.

That appears to have backfired.

With their elevated stature as international peace activists - and film stars - Hudson, Gilbert and Platte are newly energized.

"How many times have we seen in the history books the power of nonviolent activism?" Platte said, recalling Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and others. "We will continue to hold the government accountable."

But how? Almost anything they do now could send them back to prison.

"We don't use the word 'strategy,' " Gilbert said. "We simply speak the truth."

And with that, the three elderly ex-con peace activists smiled benevolently.

Stay tuned.

Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com .