Part of the Modernist Agenda to Turn Everyone into Criminals...

...because a population that knows it can be sent to jail at the whim of the State is a compliant population.

Canada cracks down on "illegal cultic activities," i.e., saying Mass.

Paula Celani will be in a Montreal courtroom Nov. 1 fighting a fine for attending an illegal Roman Catholic Mass.


Canadians of all religious faiths – and even those who care only about protecting Charter freedoms – should cross their fingers that she wins.

Celani actually showed up to fight the case this week. Alas, three public sector “witnesses” expected to testify against her were no shows so the matter was delayed until the day after Halloween.

“I’m not sure why I’m the one who has to make the effort to come back when they’re the ones who didn’t show up,” Celani said after Tuesday’s brief hearing before Judge Jean-Pierre Bessette. “It doesn’t make sense, but then nothing about this does. It’s ridiculous.”

Ridiculous doesn’t begin to describe it. Frightening is a much better place to start for the events that began with an entirely uneventful gathering of a Catholic group on October 4, 2009. Celani is the one in court only because her signature was on a $700 rental contract for the use of two rooms in a city-owned complex called La Maison du Brasseur in the borough of Lachine, just west of downtown Montreal.

About 100 people belonging to a lay Catholic association used the rooms to watch some inspirational videos and have a potluck lunch together. Oh, and horror of horrors, they sang songs and held a Mass behind closed doors. Then everyone went home. End of story. Or so it seemed.

Except that seven months later, in April 2010, Celani received a $144 ticket for having allowed the Mass to take place.

By so doing, she had broken a bylaw that prohibits “cultic” activity such as “praying, singing religious songs or conducting religious celebrations.” Under the same regulations, interestingly, renters are allowed to serve liquor provided they have the necessary permits. They are forbidden, however, from using propane tanks to cook inside the building. So, you can get hammered in La Maison du Brasseur. You just can’t blow the place up or mention God.

Perhaps the state needs "time, place and manner" regulations of this kind in order to prevent the anarchy and chaos and public inconvenience of people praying behind closed doors, maybe, but not its likely.  Whatever the justification this seems like a stupid waste of public resources. It is a sad commentary on the state of the modern State that there were, apparently, no sensible person to stop this idiocy.

It reminds us of the immortal truth spoken by the Prophet Gilbert:

"In short, we do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws."

G.K. Chesterton, Thoughts around Koepenick (1915).

This is another example of a "chiasmus" offered by Ward Farnsworth in his most engaging "Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric."

Via Mark Shea.