When French explorers arrived on the shores of what would come to be called New France in the mid-sixteenth century, accompanying chaplains celebrated Catholic Masses of thanksgiving in the open air. This year, the Quebec government has promised to table legislation that will see public prayer banned in the province.
How is it possible that in a cradle of North American Catholicism, one that can boast a communion of canonized saints attached to its settlement, public demonstrations of religious faith—a basic right according to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—will soon become forbidden?
The answer is a complicated one. The immediate catalyst has been the weekly political demonstration by a group called Montreal4Palestine held in the square facing the iconic Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal. What seems to disturb Quebecers most are not the calls for “resistance until liberation” or an “Intifada revolution” but the laying out of prayer mats for Muslim afternoon prayers at the conclusion of the demonstration. In December 2024, Quebec premier François Legault told a press scrum that “to see people praying in the street, in public parks, this is not something we want in Quebec.” He concluded: “You should pray in a place that is for praying.”
In what presents as a classic baby and bathwater scenario, Quebecers don’t seem to grasp there is a baby to lose.
Legault likes to positively reference what he calls Quebec’s “heritage” of Catholicism. But he seems to forget, or not know, or perhaps not care, how manifesting that Catholic heritage includes public prayer, such as eucharistic processions and ecumenical Good Friday walks from church to church.
The banning of public prayer is the next natural step for a province that for twenty years has systematically imposed a practical atheism upon the public square.
Laïcité is the term used to describe the secularism of France, established by the 1905 law of the Third Republic that separated church and state. Since at least its “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s, Quebec has been struggling to define its own brand of secularism. At first, it favored an “open” secularism that sought to weaken the Catholic Church’s influence in political and public institutions, while allowing people to practice religion in their personal and social lives without much restriction.
But this did not last, and there has long been pressure from prominent politicians and academics to make Quebec entirely secular and push religion into the shadows.
The Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government has accelerated matters significantly. In 2019, Bill 21 (An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State) was passed with broad support from the Quebec public. The law bars public-sector workers, including teachers, from wearing any religious symbols at work and amended the preamble of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to qualify that “the Quebec nation considers State laicity to be of fundamental importance.”
A hard-line secularism has become a fundamental Quebec value that, according to a recently passed immigration and integration law (unlike other Canadian provinces, Quebec holds control over selecting economic immigrants and setting immigration levels), is central to the “common culture” that immigrants must now adopt.
As defined by the Quebec state, laïcité also seems to preclude the public avowing of certain ideas, or even the ability of certain people (as in, Christians) who might hold verboten ideas while occupying a public platform.
In 2023, an evangelical Christian organization planning a “Faith Fire Freedom Rally” learned its contract with the intended venue, Centre des Congrés de Québec, a facility owned by the Quebec government, had been canceled. The government’s stated rationale was the church group’s opposition to abortion (even though rally organizers had said the event would be about “reconciliation, worship and fellowship”). “It’s a question of judgment,” Legault said. “We’re not going to allow anti-abortion groups to put on big shows in public places.”
Legault meant it. Quebec tourism minister Caroline Proulx announced that events like the rally must no longer be held at any conference center under provincial jurisdiction, including the Palais des Congrès de Montréal and the Parc Olympique. “It’s against the fundamental principles of Quebec,” Proulx said. “This type of event will not take place here.”
The issue of the public prayer ban is further complicated by a governing party that has seen its fortunes wane and is in need of something, anything, to distract from a government digital transition debacle that led to a budget overrun of $500 million, not to mention the terrible economic position the province finds itself in a little over a year before the next provincial election. Political commentator Daniel Béland referred to the ban as Legault’s “Hail Mary.”
There has been some pushback from the Quebec bishops to the prayer ban. Bishop Martin Laliberté, president of the Quebec Bishops’ Assembly, published an open letter asserting that the “secular nature of the State does not require the secular nature of society.” In an opinion piece for La Presse, Montreal Archbishop Christian Lépine wrote that state secularism does “not require the public erasure of faith in society.”
But in a province where only 2 percent of the Catholic population attend weekly Mass, and the political class is tone-deaf if not outright hostile toward religion, the Church is a weak voice in the “common culture” wilderness. One can hope that the saints of New France are interceding on behalf of the new, secular Quebec.
Image by Maurice HADDAD, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.