Duquesne University's decision to bar WDUQ-FM, Pittsburgh's principal National Public Radio outlet, from accepting financial support from Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania has raised some difficult issues.

There is no question that Duquesne, in keeping with the Catholic character of that institution, has the right to decline donations from Planned Parenthood and keep its sponsorship messages off the station. Planned Parenthood advocates a different attitude toward family planning from that of the Roman Catholic Church. It is important to add that Planned Parenthood's on-air messages mentioned its "support for DUQ" and benign topics like health-care services to men, lessons on abstinence, cancer screenings and teaching teens to make good choices. None of the banned messages used the word "abortion."

In the mind of Pittsburghers, the NPR segments carried by WDUQ have become the gold standard, one of the sources of record for objective, accurate world and national news. The station also has its own reliable staff for local news-gathering. For the Catholic Church in the form of Duquesne University to intervene in that relationship, by choosing which mainstream groups may or may not contribute financial support, is to damage the radio station's connection to its listeners. Today it's no support or messages from Planned Parenthood; tomorrow it may be no reporting on pedophile priests.

That Duquesne's intervention came during one of WDUQ's fund drives made it worse. The station is asking for money to sustain its NPR programming and other features, but the check gets written to WDUQ-FM. Lots of people in this area are ready to finance NPR programming, but it's hard to imagine that many of them want to underwrite local Catholic radio.

There are ways out of this dilemma. One of them is for Duquesne University to lift its ban on WDUQ's accepting support from Planned Parenthood. If its leadership feels the need to explain, it could say that it removed its objection in the spirit of a university's fundamental attachment to freedom of thought and expression, in spite of its disagreement with Planned Parenthood positions.

A second alternative is for another Pittsburgh radio station to vie for the NPR affiliation and replace Duquesne as its primary home. That would be a loss for the university, but what's important is that the people of southwestern Pennsylvania continue to have access to the news, free of religious constraint.