ARTICLE II: ON THE CAUSES BECAUSE OF WHICH SERVILE WORKS CAN BE PERMITTED ON A FEAST DAY

Three principal causes are numbered, namely charity, piety, necessity.

416. • I. Charity toward one's neighbor. Hence it is licit on a feast day: 1° to do what is necessary for relieving the sick; 2° to dig a grave for burying the dead; 3° to labor for some determinate poor man, to whom it would be licit to work by reason of grave necessity; yet, according to grave theologians, not for the poor in general, unless in grave and certain necessity.

II. Piety toward God. It is licit because of piety: 1° to do all works proximately serving the worship of God, as to adorn the church, the altar, etc.; 2° to sweep the Church, and prepare other things which pertain to its cleanliness. But it is not licit to repair the Church (unless it is very poor), to cut stones for this, etc.; because these serve divine service only more remotely.¹

417. • III. Necessity, whether one's own or another's, both of soul and of body. Hence:

1° The poor are excused who otherwise could not feed themselves and their own, provided they work privately and with scandal excluded.

2° All whose works once begun cannot be interrupted without great damage are excused, as those casting iron, etc.

3° Bakers likewise are excused who must have fresh bread so that they may satisfy buyers, for example in a populous city.

4° Likewise tailors who make funeral or wedding clothes, which they cannot complete before the feast day either by themselves or through others.

5° Likewise farmers who, because of past or imminent rain, turn, bind, and carry hay or crops.

6° Likewise servants, wives, and sons of the family in those cases which we reported n. 408. 11°.

7° Blacksmiths are excused who shoe horses on the road or brought by farmers from a certain necessity, or repair plowshares necessary for farmers on the following day; and also those who repair wagons broken by accident, bridges, or public roads, if the work cannot be deferred without loss of the public good.

8° Those also are excused who labor for the public utility when some necessity presses, for example if there is question of celebrating a victory, of preparing a feast for the sake of some public rejoicing.

9° Probably those are excused who sustain themselves by labor, because of extraordinary gain (but not of daily wage), because to omit such gain is the same for them as to suffer grave damage.

10° "On feasts many things are generally done which are servile and little agreeable to ecclesiastical laws; the rigor of these laws has been greatly relaxed by custom in this region, since from the beginning few Catholics were living among non-Catholics, who could not observe them without grave damage,² which even now happens to very many. Therefore shops are open, business is transacted and works. Yet the faithful are to be urged to hear at least Mass."¹ What Kenrick here asserts was true almost everywhere at the time when he was writing; yet now in many places, with the number of Catholics increasing day by day and their condition improved, these things are no longer true so universally. Therefore nowadays it will not be licit for confessors and pastors of souls to use altogether the same benignity in this matter as before; but places will have to be distinguished, and in the very places in which feasts can now more easily be commonly observed by Catholics, account will have to be taken of the condition of individuals, whether merchants, craftsmen, or laborers. It will also be necessary to distinguish between those who compel their Catholic workers to labor and those who leave this to their judgment; for these are more easily excused than those. - There are besides some who enjoin servile works to be exercised on Sunday upon men not baptized, or permit non-Catholics to labor on a feast day. Each seems to be excused: the former indeed because, although heretics of themselves are bound by the laws of the Church, nevertheless the Church does not urge the observance of feasts in their regard in regions where heresies rage unpunished; but the latter because the opinion² of those who derive the whole observance of the Lord's Day from the law of the Church is the truer one. Yet care must be taken lest these things be done with scandal of others, especially on Sunday.

11° Butchers who kill animals are excused, if this cannot conveniently be done the day before, or because of summer heat meats cannot be preserved for the following days.³

12° There is no fault on Sundays in placing vessels under trees from which sugar liquid flows, and thereafter pouring it into another vessel, when it happens that within a few more days the liquid is flowing.⁵

13° Since tobacco cannot be planted except in moistened soil, those are easily excused who plant it on Sunday after rains fallen the preceding day, if it is to be feared that another opportunity will be lacking.⁶

But although however many have been enumerated up to now do not need dispensation, nevertheless it must be advised to the faithful that, if they conveniently can, they should ask leave from an ecclesiastical Superior, namely lest, deceived by cupidity, they labor with scandal of others without sufficient cause for excusing. But by Superior here is understood especially the Bishop; who, although he cannot grant a general dispensation for all his subjects, and much less a permanent one (since that would be equivalent to suppression of feasts), nevertheless as to some acts with particular persons he can dispense from a reasonable cause; indeed custom also grants this faculty to the pastor.

14° But those are not to be excused, indeed are to be severely rebuked, who rather often prolong work begun after midnight into the feast day, even under pretext of necessity; because generally that necessity is voluntary for them, since very often they throw themselves into it, either by undertaking more works to be completed for a certain day than they can finish, or by not employing that number of workers which the work would require, or by wasting time during the week on useless matters. You would more easily excuse those to whom a work to be completed on the following feast day was handed over on the preceding day.

418. • Quaer. Does the reason of avoiding idleness excuse?

Resp. Negatively, commonly speaking. For that reason is wholly insufficient for setting aside a law of the Church so grave. Laymann, Mazzotta, etc., make an exception if idleness induces a probable danger of sinning; because, they say, if danger of temporal damage excuses, a fortiori danger of spiritual damage ought to excuse. But St. Alphonsus¹ more willingly restricts this to the case in which a temptation would press which could not otherwise be overcome, which rarely happens.

Honor thy father and thy mother.¹

This precept primarily and directly regards the obligations of children toward parents; but secondarily and implicitly it looks to the obligations of parents toward children, and also the mutual obligations of other Superiors and inferiors.