And just because churches are allowed to have gatherings of people greater than what is normally considered safe, doesn’t mean that it is always responsible for us to actually do that.
Except that's not what was being allowed/ordered in New York. As I understand it, New York was limiting religious gatherings to a maximum head count, not a percentage of occupancy like other enterprises. That was the point of the lawsuit and Gorsuch's opinion. They were not being given preferential treatment. Quite the opposite. And that runs afoul of their First Amendment protections. Certainly if
everything is shut down, then they no reason to complain. The distinctions which the governor decreed may be justifiable if done by a legislature, I'm not sure about that yet. But for this case, Gorsuch seems to be saying it's an arbitrary exercise of executive discretion which violates the First Amendment.
That lower courts, or the chief justice, didn't come to this conclusion is not because it's not true, but procedural. That's how I take the chiefs dissent, not on the merits. Contrary to the bile he's once again getting from the right.
In Pennsylvania, churches are under the same restrictions as any public indoor gathering: a percentage of capacity. (When we are not "red" and all public gatherings are limited to a minimal head count not percentage.) I see nothing wrong with that, because it applies equally to any large gathering. Nothing special because we are a church. My congregation has required masks indoors, irrespective of any state mandate, when we finally resumed worship in the fall, outdoors initially and subsequently when moved inside in November--it wasn't necessarily mandated for a while. Indoors we are not singing corporately. YMMV