Chapter II. Servile Work

IN order that all, and especially the poor, may have the opportunity of fulfilling their religious duties, the Church has forbidden servile work to be done on Sunday. Servile work is the rougher and harder sort of manual labour which is done by common workmen and labourers, and which used to be done by slaves. It comprises ploughing, digging, building, sewing, and similar occupations. It is distinguished from liberal and from mixed work. Liberal work is done mainly by the intellect, and comprises writing, studying, painting, and so forth. Mixed work comprises a class of occupations which are neither exclusively liberal nor servile, but which are done indifferently by all conditions of men. In this class are hunting, fishing, travelling, and similar occupations. Of these only servile work is forbidden on Sundays, and in determining what is servile work, and therefore forbidden, we must consider not only the nature of the work itself, but also the way in which it is done, the light in which it is commonly regarded, and other circumstances. Thus it is usually held that although the rougher work of the sculptor is servile and unlawful, the more delicate is liberal and may be done on a Sunday. Similarly, fishing with rod and line is not unlawful, but going out to sea with a fishing-smack and plying the trade in the ordinary working-day way is forbidden. In the same way one who lives by photography should not ply his trade on a Sunday, but it would not be wrong for an amateur to do the same work on that day by way of recreation and amusement.

This part of the precept of keeping the Sunday holy also binds under pain of grave sin. If, however, the matter be light, the doing of a little servile work on a Sunday will be only a venial sin, and none at all if there be good reason for it. According to the common opinion, it would be necessary to work for well over two hours at something which is forbidden in order to commit a grave sin. Still longer time would be required for a mortal sin in doing servile work of a lighter kind, which had for it some sort of excuse on the ground that it helps on the cause of religion and charity. Making rosary beads or scapulars belongs to this category.

Public trading is also forbidden on Sundays, as well as judicial proceedings in the exercise of contentious jurisdiction, and the solemn and public taking of oaths (Can. 1248).

English municipal law goes farther than the law of the Church in its provisions for the due observance of the Lord’s Day. Thus not only is Sunday a dies non for the sitting of courts or the meeting of public bodies, but contracts such as are within the ordinary calling of tradesmen, workmen, labourers, or other persons of the same sort, made and completed on Sunday, are void, and abstention from work and even from play is required by a series of statutes.¹ Although these provisions of the civil authority do not impose an obligation in conscience under pain of sin, yet indirectly they have caused the Sunday to be observed among us with greater strictness than is absolutely required by ecclesiastical law.

¹ Encyclopedia of Laws, s.v. Sunday.

As we saw with regard to the hearing of Mass, so in this matter too, if the precept cannot be observed without serious inconvenience, it ceases to bind. And so, work in foundries or in agriculture which cannot be stopped without grave inconvenience and loss may be done on Sundays. Work, too, in the direct service of religion, or necessary works of charity connected with the care and nursing of the sick, or the burying of the dead, are not forbidden. Custom permits of the sweeping of the house and the cooking of meals, and certain other more or less necessary occupations on Sunday. Finally, ecclesiastical authority can, for good reason, dispense in the observance of this law. Not only Bishops, but priests who have the cure of souls, have discretionary power to give dispensations in particular cases.” 2-7 West., d. 23, n. 13 Can. 1245; sec. I.