A matter of conscience.

Your March 26 editorial ("Uncharitable Interpretation") denounces the recent decision by the Supreme Court of California that Catholic Charities must comply with state law and include prescription contraceptives with its health-insurance benefits for employees. You called the decision "a blatant assault on religious liberty and freedom of conscience," and suggest that it could lead to a slippery slope which might require Catholic hospitals to perform sterilization or abortion procedures.

I don't see that happening. Why not? Because you are wrong about whose conscience is being coerced. If a church-related institution were forced to provide a service like abortion, which it deemed immoral, that would violate the principles of freedom of religion and of conscience. What Catholic Charities is being forced to do here is to respect the independent consciences of its employees, many of whom surely do not believe that contraceptive use is a sin. The editorial states that "religious pluralism needs protection." I think that's what the Court was trying to do.

Analogies may help. With this ruling, is Catholic Charities of California in the position of a Jewish agency which is forced to buy, prepare, and dish out pork? Or, rather, is it like a Jewish agency which coerces its employees not to buy pork for consumption at home? If health care is a benefit that employees earn and make their own choices about (as the rightful owner of the benefit), then the latter analogy is the appropriate one.

STEVE CALOGERO

San Antonio, Tex.

The editors reply:

Steve Calogero makes a good point concerning religious pluralism and the rights of individual conscience. However, he is too sanguine about the ramifications of this case for the free exercise of religion especially institutional religion, in the public square, and his analogy fails. Health care is not precisely a benefit employees earn and thereby "own." Employers routinely modify and often do away altogether with health-care benefits. How can employees "own" the benefit if employers are free to withhold it? Requiring Catholic Charities to provide prescription contraception coverage is more like requiring a Jewish agency to serve pork, or a Catholic hospital to perform abortions. It is not a restriction on the independent consciences of employees. The better analogy might be that those who do not agree with Jewish dietary laws should not be permitted to compel non-Kosher practices in Jewish institutions. As a matter of constitutional law, the free exercise of religion and the rights of conscience must be given broad latitude. Catholic Charities should not be forced to provide coverage it considers (rightly or wrongly) morally objectionable.