LETTER TO EDITOR: Alaska senators ignore Catholic teaching

It saddened my heart to read that Alaska’s U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, both baptized Catholics, voted for a failed measure that would have forced employers to follow the federal HHS mandate requiring them to provide, as part of employee health insurance policies, contraception, sterilization and abortion inducing drugs, regardless of the employer’s conscientious objections.

I was just celebrating the recent U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down that mandate in the Hobby Lobby case. But it seems that Murkowski and Begich have rejected God’s law and church teachings regarding the prohibition on contraception and the protection of unborn human life.

I do not judge their souls, only their actions. God is our judge, but I can only imagine the punishment for Catholics who ignore the teachings of the church on such grave matters.

— Jon Eric Thompson, Anchorage