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felsguy
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Indeed, and depending on the topic, sometimes very hard work 
Permitted business and commerce on Sundays?
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In our case, it was the late 1970s. Stores could be open on a limited basis, and the bishop issued a warning about it to Catholics, that they still shouldnât neglect the Lordâs Day.
In the early 1980s they could open on Sundays on a regular basis.
I find Kantâs âcategorical imperativeâ to be a helpful adjunct to Catholic morality â âact in such a way that you would have your action become a universal lawâ. If everybody did as I would do, with regard to Sunday commerce, no businesses other than simple restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stores, and possibly service stations, could afford to stay open, and not even all of those. For instance, in Israel, only certain pharmacies are open on Shabbat. I donât know how they determine which ones will open and which ones wonât. In a Catholic society, perhaps they could cooperate and rotate things (grocersâ guilds, anyone?) â Publix stays open the first Sunday of the month, Safeway the second Sunday, Kroger the third Sunday, and so on.
No, but if an individual restaurant or chain chooses to close, that is commendable. Many Southern restaurants do precisely that. Restaurants and ice cream stands would probably fall under the rubric of local custom. Perhaps just open for the after-church lunch/brunch crowd, or maybe for dinner to take work off of whomever in the family cooks the meals?
Just be thankful you donât live in Germany. I havenât been there for 10 years, but last time I was in Aachen, they had the town closed up tighter than a clamshell on Sunday. I had to go to the train stationâs convenience store to get snacks such as yogurt and sandwich spread â thatâs about all that was open. The doner stand was open (Deo gratias), as was the Carolus Thermen hot springs spa.
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Pattylt
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Back in my youth when I lived in my very Jewish neighborhood, all the Jewish stores were closed for sabbath on Saturday and open on Sunday. Most of the Sunday business customers were the Christians coming to the delis after church, the Jewish grocers for needed items and the Jewish hardware store did a roaring business for Sunday handymen! I guess if everyone is going to eat and shop on Sundays, the Christian owners might as well get some of it! 
But, thatâs the issue, isnât it? If the Christians are going out eating and shopping, the stores are going to be open for it. If the Christians stopped all their shopping and eating, the businesses would close. Meanwhile, all the non religious are going to go to wherever is open.
But, thatâs the issue, isnât it? If the Christians are going out eating and shopping, the stores are going to be open for it. If the Christians stopped all their shopping and eating, the businesses would close. Meanwhile, all the non religious are going to go to wherever is open.
Have you ever heard of âgetting brain-tiredâ? Absolutely!So you consider thinking to be actual work?
When youâre given twice as much work to do, as anyone could possibly get done, and you cannibalize your Sundays to go into the office and keep your head above water⌠yes, that is actual work, and it erodes the very nature of the Lordâs Day, whether it is technically âpermittedâ or not.
Four years ago, I basically told them Iâm no longer your guy, you need to hire more people (which, of course, they didnât do, they let people go instead, and had to hire subcontractors to do my work⌠which costs money tooâŚ). Never looked back, never regretted it for a second.
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Irishmom2
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I was talking about thinking in relation to posting. Posting here is not work, nor is it anyoneâs job.
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Anrakyr
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Its kinda @camoderator job <3
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Irishmom2
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I thought of that after I said that, but I meant everyone else here. 
Tis_Bearself
Patron
The Catechism specifically notes that traditional Sunday activities include sports and restaurants, and that itâs okay to engage in such traditional activities, as well as activities that are necessary to society such as hospitals.
Sunday is supposed to be a pleasant day for people, not one where we have to sit around making sure we donât do a lick of anything that might be considered âworkâ.
I find the obsession on this forum with what constitutes Sunday work to be bizarre. My impression of the work prohibition in the past was that it meant you were not supposed to be treating Sunday as just another day of the week, instead you were supposed to make sure you went to Mass and spent time with your family/ with the Lord, and if you had employees you were supposed to respect their need for some time off (which doesnât necessarily mean you have to shut the whole business down on Sunday).
If somebody else wants to observe Sunday by not lifting a finger in the manner of some orthodox Jewish people observing their Sabbath, then theyâre free to do that, the Church doesnât forbid it, but the Church also doesnât require that.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
Theyâre often barely around on Sundays.
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kapp19
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It is a fuzzier issue than one thinks.
Alphonsus is pretty hard on this topic, for what itâs worth - though it relates with very physical labor, and/or paid labor, which one can easily avoid.
Alphonsus is pretty hard on this topic, for what itâs worth - though it relates with very physical labor, and/or paid labor, which one can easily avoid.
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Pitcairn17
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I was responding to the concern that computer usage makes technical people âbehind the scenesâ who are responsible for things like network maintenance work on Sundays - not people at their keyboards. Presumably CAF moderators must also work Sundays since the site is up then, but perhaps not.Pitcairn17:
Sitting around typing out responses on our devices is hardly work.
I work Sundays on occasion. I work at a wine tasting room in a resort town. Naturally, the majority of our customers are tourists on vacation, either weekenders or those staying for an extended period. Because Saturday and Sunday comprise the bulk of their vacation time, most businesses in our area are open through the weekend and close Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday (especially if the owners are also the sole employees⌠they need a break, too.)
I definitely donât consider my work to be necessary except that it keeps the company running and the employees need to pay their bills and losing wages and tips on one of the busiest days of the week isnât helpful, but I do make it a point to tell my employer that I can work Sundays ONLY if I have the opportunity to attend Mass. Obviously Saturday evening Mass is not possible because Saturday is THE busiest day of the week and weâre open much later, but I can easily attend early morning Mass on Sunday and still be to work by the time we open at 11 a.m. Mass is the priority; my employer is wonderful for allowing me to fulfill my obligation without any problems. I have even requested an occasional âearly offâ on Saturdays when we were able to go to confession and the times were just before the Saturday evening Mass (if I couldnât get an appointment for a different day.)
I definitely donât consider my work to be necessary except that it keeps the company running and the employees need to pay their bills and losing wages and tips on one of the busiest days of the week isnât helpful, but I do make it a point to tell my employer that I can work Sundays ONLY if I have the opportunity to attend Mass. Obviously Saturday evening Mass is not possible because Saturday is THE busiest day of the week and weâre open much later, but I can easily attend early morning Mass on Sunday and still be to work by the time we open at 11 a.m. Mass is the priority; my employer is wonderful for allowing me to fulfill my obligation without any problems. I have even requested an occasional âearly offâ on Saturdays when we were able to go to confession and the times were just before the Saturday evening Mass (if I couldnât get an appointment for a different day.)
If there appears to be an âobsessionâ, as you put it, with Sunday work, it is probably because the people on this forum are, in the main, serious Catholics who actually care about whether they offend Almighty God by sin â not to suggest you arenât, quite, quite, the contrary.
It has always been a traditional Catholic teaching that âyou donât work or shop on Sundaysâ. Then the question is âunless we are supposed to live like Orthodox or Hasidic Jews â and we assume we are not â what, then, can we do?â. Then there is the fact that we live in the United States (many of us, anyway, probably most of us), and anyone who knows anything at all about America, knows that making money, efficiency, and convenience are at the very core of the contemporary American experience and lifestyle. Clearly there are some forms of work that are absolutely necessary on Sundays â cows donât quit giving milk one day a week, livestock must be fed and tended to, hospitals and fire departments canât just shut down. But there are other forms of work that are not absolutely necessary.
Well, then, maybe theyâre not âabsolutely necessaryâ, but they keep society running smoothly, they preserve people from severe inconvenience, and they can even enhance the quality of life on the Lordâs Day for others, such as restaurants and, as somehow always tends to get noted (even in Joneâs Moral Theology), ice cream parlors. So far, so good. And then there are businesses that, as a practical matter, need to be open, if for no other reason than that people are not perfect and âthings come upâ. You realize youâre out of gas. You realize that youâre out of milk or bread. And so on.
But not to âmansplainâ (which, when women do it, is seemingly not objectionable), nor to âCatholic-splainâ, or âtrad-splainâ, or whatever. You get the idea. There is recognizing that Sunday needs to be kept âspecialâ in some way, ratchet back oneâs labor and commercial activity, and not to take on large, ambitious tasks that totally consume the day. And then there is there is the contemporary âdiseaseâ, so to speak, that I tried to sum up in the OP.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
I was raised by a traditional Catholic from a traditional Catholic family who went to confession regularly, didnât eat meat on Friday etc and I never heard a thing about âyou donât work or shop on Sundaysâ. Nor did this ever come up in 12 years of Catholic school including when the old school sisters dressed in the full habit were teaching us. Typically, shopping was either a family/friends fun excursion (like browsing the mall, going to the movies) or it was something that needed to be done because people in the family who went to work or school on Monday morning needed things like breakfast and lunch food or a school supply or piece of clothing. Busy moms might not have noticed till Sunday that the baloney ran out or little Johnny might have forgotten to mention he needed some special thing for Monday morning assignment.
Although my own father didnât go to work on Sundays, many of my friendsâ fathers sometimes did because they worked in necessary positions like medical, police, fire, plumber who sometimes took emergency calls, restaurant that needed to be open on Sunday because families came for Sunday brunch/ dinner, or factory shift work where they might be called in on Sunday. They all met their Mass obligations, including Saturday vigil if necessary, and it was understood that while they would prefer to have Sunday off, they had to keep their livelihood.
My own father did not go to the office but he might have had to mow the lawn or do some similar home maintenance task on Sunday because it might be the only day he had to do it all week, for instance if the weather did not cooperate on Saturday or if he had spent Saturday doing a family activity.
I can remember priests preaching against people missing Mass on Sunday, but I never heard a priest criticize persons who had to work their jobs on Sunday. I grew up in the Rust Belt in the middle of the recession and people who had steady jobs considered themselves lucky to have them and tried very hard to keep them. I also donât remember any priest, and we had some very traditional priests when I was young, ever saying anything about doing yard work or home maintenance on Sunday.
The only place I have ever heard Catholics concern themselves with Sunday work, other than the old âmy work schedule makes it hard for me to get to Massâ business, is on this forum. So yes, I find it odd, and I question whether it was âtraditional Catholic teachingâ because most of the people I met when I was young who were all hung up on âSunday workâ were evangelical Protestants.
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CelticWarlord
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I very much agree. I have few specific issues with the laws pertaining to business being open on Sunday. In Victorian times this was commonplace. But I do think society was far better off when Sunday was considered a day of rest by the majority of shops and malls. My wife and I were in our 20âs when this changed in 1984 and I remember she and I going for a walk on the last weekend before it happened. The streets were virtually empty, parking lots were devoid of all traffic, and we enjoyed window shopping one last time before the crush of shoppers descended to include every day of the week.
Where I live it was not only Sunday closing, but Wednesday afternoons as well. This local law was designed to ensure retail employees got regular and predictable time off. To make up for Wednesday afternoon closures, Thursday was late night shopping with stores permitted to stay open till nine. In rural Saskatchewan everything was closed both Sunday and Monday, again to ensure time off for retail workers. Even gas stations were often closed. There may be more convenience now but planning around the store closures was the norm and very few people complained. Out where my in-laws farm the store in town is still closed Sundays and every other day between noon and one. Itâs not a problem for the folks who live out there.
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RolandThompsonGunner
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I agree, but Iâve found that on this issue, a lot of people seem to want a neat list of permitted/forbidden activities, complete with cross-references to papal pronouncements. There isnât an exhaustive, authoritative list of what activities are permissible on a Sunday. Itâs up to the individual to discern whether whatever theyâre doing is going to undermine the special nature of the day.
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Pitcairn17
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Tis_Bearself is completely correct as to the âobsessionâ here with the Sunday work question. To have spent any time here at all will have exposed you to question such as: If gardening is my hobby, can I work in the garden on Sundays? Can I wash the car? Can I take my family out for a drive on Sunday- after all, if I need gas, Iâm making someone at the gas station work? Can I go to a football / baseball game on a Sunday, because people going is making the players work. Can I do homework on a Sunday ?(always a popular question). And yes, speaking of Hasidism - do I have to make Sunday dinner the night before so Iâm not preparing food on the Sabbath? And finally - since you specifically mentioned the ice cream issue: Can I take my family out for ice cream on Sundays?
All of these have I seen here. And for you to imply that NOT asking such questions marks one as a not-serious Catholic who does not care about offending God is offensive, Pharisaical, and condescending.
All of these have I seen here. And for you to imply that NOT asking such questions marks one as a not-serious Catholic who does not care about offending God is offensive, Pharisaical, and condescending.
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27lw
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I think maybe too many of us have read Maria Von Trappâs book âAround the year with the von Trapp Familyâ. Much discussion of a traditional Austrian Catholic Sunday, much discussion about how strange it was for Maria von Trapp to see suburban American women gardening in their dungarees on a Sunday. Also much consternation and amazement that Christmas carols were being played in American department stores even at the beginning of Advent.
I believe the context of her writing about what constitutes a proper Catholic Sunday was that it was beginning to be lost, even then in the late 1930s / 1940s.
Itâs a fun read and makes many of us into strange old fuddy-duddies at heart!
I believe the context of her writing about what constitutes a proper Catholic Sunday was that it was beginning to be lost, even then in the late 1930s / 1940s.
Itâs a fun read and makes many of us into strange old fuddy-duddies at heart!
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Irishmom2
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I havenât read the book, maybe you can explain what is strange about gardening?
I view gardening as a hobby, not as work. I love to plant things and see them grow. I love to design garden beds, it is a creative outlet, not work.
And as far as âdungareesâ what else would one wear to dig in the dirt?
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