Church and State (Cont.)

Ever since Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science more than a century ago as a religion and a system of healing, courts have struggled with issues that have special meaning for the faith’s adherents: Can a parent who believes that disease is caused by mental error and is cured through prayer be forced to seek more orthodox medical care for his child? If the parent calls a Christian Science practitioner instead of a medical doctor, can he be charged with child abuse? If the child dies, is the parent guilty of a crime?

The California Supreme Court entered the fray last week, ruling that a Sacramento mother may be tried for involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment, both felonies, because her 4-year-old daughter died of meningitis after being treated by a Christian Science practitioner. Neither the First Amendment’s free-exercise-of-religion clause nor a California statute recognizing treatment by prayer automatically shields a Christian Scientist from criminal prosecution if a child dies or suffers serious injury, Justice Stanley Mosk wrote for the court. “Parents have no right to free exercise of religion at the price of a child’s life,” Mosk declared.

Most Californians, who instinctively trust doctors and medicines rather than prayer, will have no trouble with the balancing test that the high court set forth. “Prayer treatment will be accommodated as an acceptable means of attending to the needs of a child only insofar as serious physical harm or illness is not at risk,” Mosk wrote. The state Legislature used the same standard in a new law, effective next Jan. 1, to guide court decisions about when to remove a child from his parents’ custody.

But, for the country’s estimated 400,000 believers in Christian Science, such a rule effectively precludes them from following a fundamental tenet of their faith. As far as their children are concerned, they pray at their own peril. Presumably it’s still safe to consult a Christian Science practitioner if a child has a common cold, but for any more serious malady a parent risks prosecution by depending on a practitioner’s prayers. Even flu can be tricky; that’s what Laurie G. Walker, the Sacramento mother, thought 4-year-old Shauntay had when she died in 1984.

Christian Science, which attracts many thoughtful believers, is hardly doctrinaire. Contrary to myth, the church lets each person decide whether an illness is so urgent that standard medical treatment is needed instead of prayer; no one is stigmatized or threatened with divine retribution for consulting a doctor. But now the state of California is substituting its own judgment for that of Christian Science parents and, in effect, is declaring that medical doctors always know best. That, as Mosk acknowledges, is “a religious infringement of significant dimensions,” but one outweighed by the state’s interest in protecting “the very lives of California’s children.”

The saving grace of the decision is that it means only that Christian Science parents can be prosecuted, not that they must be convicted if a child in the care of a church practitioner dies. In the case of Laurie Walker, a trial jury must still decide whether she committed any crime, whether she genuinely believed that a Christian Science practitioner would heal her daughter and whether that faith was reasonable. Those are very difficult questions of fact--the kind that the judicial system wisely leaves to jurors, who can mitigate the harshness of legal principles with compassion for a parent who has lost a beloved child.