Let's be clear.
Calgary, Alberta, RCMP officers finally arrested Arthur Pawlowski for holding services where nobody was wearing masks and where nobody was making the slightest effort to practice physical distancing, in accordance with provincial Covid19 laws.
This finally happened after this pastor flagrantly and repeatedly violated Provincial Covid19 laws.
The laws apply equally to all Albertans, businesses, social organizations, and all public places where people gather indoors.
Churches are not being targeted.
The freedom to pray is not being infringed.
In the midst of a global pandemic nobody has a right to endanger human lives by spreading the disease because of a "sovereign citizen" belief that they can do whatever they damn well please.
You seem to be confusing the fundamental right to worship with the "freedom to pray". Worshiping is not synonymous with praying, though prayer can be a form of worship. Worshiping takes difference forms for different people, including gathering in congregations, and here the definition of "worship" matters.
Your last sentence leads me to believe that you are also missing the point of the debate, which is whether the right to be safe is more important than the right to worship. Your opinion is noted, but that position is certainly not unanimously shared by all reasonable, rational citizens.
Further, there is a more fundamental argument about whether the restrictions being imposed due to COVID represent a justified infringement on ANY fundamental rights, given the low morbidity and minor severity of the symptoms caused by the virus in the vast majority of cases.
The right to pray or worship or assemble does not give anyone the right to spread the disease to the general public.
Even if you could assemble, and risk only your own skins, you would still be placing a burden on hospitals and the healthcare system.
Furthermore, if 100 people pack themselves into a church without masks and only one of them is infected with Covid19, then many of those people present will be infected with the virus, and will then spread it to the general public, and in so doing be responsible for needless deaths and incapacitation.
And nobody is saying that you can not pray or worship. The province is however saying that you can't pack people in like sardines without masks in order to slow the spread of the disease.
Also, your claim that it is okay to spread the disease as long as only a minority of those infected die is both un-Christian, selfish, and disgusting.
Over a period of six decades I have watched people claim that nobody has any right to make them do anything if they don't want to. I have watched idiots protest and whine over non-smoking laws in restaurants, mandatory seat belt laws, and mandatory motorcycle helmet laws.
Their mantra is: "I want what I want because I want it, and screw you if you won't let me do it, no matter stupid and selfish and dangerous it is."
So, beach and whine all that you like. You didn't win those fights and you won't win this one.
And thank God for that.
