Btw, I once had a job where I had to work Sunday and I hated that…but it was not retail, so no commerce took place.
I’m sorry but I fail to see why its wrong to go to a movie on Sunday. I have done so with my family a number of times and I also work retail and that means I work on Sundays sometimes along with doing homework for college.
The problem, if there is/were one, is not with watching a movie on Sunday (or paying to do the same), but instead with exploiting others’ lack of rest on Sunday in order to secure one’s own. If someone really needs the income and an/or an employer insists on Sunday hours as part of the overall agreement, it’s alright for them to work on Sunday, but we should try to avoid contributing to that coercive dynamic if we can.
CCC 2187 Sanctifying Sundays and holy days requires a common effort. Every Christian should avoid making unnecessary demands on others that would hinder them from observing the Lord’s Day. Traditional activities (sport, restaurants, etc.), and social necessities (public services, etc.), require some people to work on Sundays, but everyone should still take care to set aside sufficient time for leisure. With temperance and charity the faithful will see to it that they avoid the excesses and violence sometimes associated with popular leisure activities. In spite of economic constraints, public authorities should ensure citizens a time intended for rest and divine worship. Employers have a similar obligation toward their employees.
2188 In respecting religious liberty and the common good of all, Christians should seek recognition of Sundays and the Church’s holy days as legal holidays. They have to give everyone a public example of prayer, respect, and joy and defend their traditions as a precious contribution to the spiritual life of society. If a country’s legislation or other reasons require work on Sunday, the day should nevertheless be lived as the day of our deliverance which lets us share in this “festal gathering,” this “assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.”
So what the Church is telling us is that we can in fact make demands upon others for Sunday work if there is sufficiently good reason to, but that apart from that necessity we should avoid it. We should even go so far as to try to close down the normal grind of public life by enforcing Sundays as legal holidays. I think it perfectly reasonable to say this precludes the rationalization that “they’re going to be open for business anyway” - sure they will, if everyone is equally fatalistic, but the only reason they choose to open on Sundays is because they think demand will make it profitable, so if Christians really took Sunday seriously that demand would disappear.
Even with this default position of not demanding work on Sundays, though, the Church does vaguely gesture at certain forms of business that serve the Sunday rest of others - “Traditional activities (sport, restaurants, etc.)” - and here because the list is not exhaustive we are left to our own best judgment of what falls into that category. It seems reasonable to me to conclude that patronizing restaurants does not violate the general rule against placing demands on others, then neither would patronizing movie theaters or many other recreational/entertainment-oriented businesses.
