Letters: Faith in the business world

Re “Health, faith and birth control,” Editorial, Aug. 1

It’s distressing that The Times agrees with the government’s novel legal argument that a person’s religious freedom doesn’t extend to his or her business. It reflects a secular view of religious faith as something confined to a one-day-a-weekchurch service.

Christians believe we are called to worship Christ with our lives — yes, even as we are conducting business. Christians open and run hospitals, as so many women of faith have in our history, because of that call. The White House has just made their caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, educating children and, yes, even running a business a choice between obeying God or Caesar.

You don’t have to be religious to believe that faith in daily life is a positive thing, worthy of legal protection.

Lauren Petron

Alexandria, Va.

The writer is a speaker at Catholic Voices USA.

The Times sees no 1st Amendment violation in the state ordering the Roman Catholic Church, as well as private Catholic business owners, to finance a practice that contradicts their belief to always refuse to cooperate with “intrinsic evil” when some or many Catholics themselves (as well as non-Catholic employees) engage in such a practice.

If it is true that Jesus Christ is who he says he is, then that truth does not become any less true simply because, say, Judas and Pontius Pilate acted in contradiction to that truth. I hope that the church shuts down all of its hospitals, universities and other services before it pays a nickel to finance an intrinsic evil.

And if our church leaders decide here to open wide their mouths, then I hope that their hungry sheep refuse to give any more of their wool until their leaders come to their senses.

Philip A. Rafferty

Inglewood

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