Both the extent and the limitations of the Supreme Court’s power are visible in a pending case raising the question of how far employers must go to accommodate employees’ religion.
Underlying this dispute—yet obviously unreachable by the Supreme Court—is the larger reality of the sabbath’s de facto secularization in today’s America.
The case now before the court—Groff v. DeJoy it’s called—concerns a mail carrier who lost his job for refusing to deliver mail on Sunday because his Christian faith forbids him to work on the sabbath. The justices heard oral arguments last month and will announce their decision before the court’s current term ends in late June or early July.
Immediately at issue here is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act barring employment discrimination on the basis of religion (as well as race, color, sex or national origin). When amending the law in 1972, Congress said an employer should make provision for an employee’s religious practice unless that would involve “undue hardship” for its business. The question for the court now is what that means in practice.
Whatever the justices eventually decide, this question is all they can decide. The larger issue of sabbath observance will remain untouched. And since Sunday closing laws stand little chance of winning approval today, either by court order or societal consensus, we must settle for the kind of religiously pluralistic patchwork solution underlying Chapter VII accompanied by conflicts like the one that brought Gerald Groff and the U.S. Postal Service to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, of course, it will remain up to individual religious believers to determine for themselves whether and how they choose to observe their religious tradition’s weekly holy day—Sunday for Christians, Saturday for Jews, Friday for Muslims. Moreover—and this certainly holds true Catholics–it’s fair to say that we all need to examine our consciences on this matter of sabbath observance.
Let’s be honest about it. Is Sunday the day we typically devote to buying groceries, browsing for bargains at the mall, and/or long hours devoted to watching back-to-back sporting events on TV? Do we sometimes skip Mass because spending an hour in church would get in the way of these activities or others that we find more pressing or just more entertaining?
“The Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2181). But it also says quite a bit else: “The institution of the Lord’s Day helps everyone enjoy adequate rest and leisure to cultivate their familial, cultural, social, and religious lives” (CCC 2184). And again: “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” (CCC 2187).
I wouldn’t presume to say who’s in the right in the case before the Supreme Court. On behalf of USPS, I should point out that the present conflict grew out of the financially hard-pressed Postal Service’s contract with Amazon to deliver the giant retailer’s packages on Sunday. And there’s no denying USPS needs all the income it can get.
As for mail carrier Groff, an Evangelical Christian, there’s much to admire in the fact that he was prepared to fight the system because of his conviction that his faith forbids him to work on Sunday. To that extent, he’s a good example to us all—one that, no matter what the court says, we all can take to heart..
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My understanding is the postal agency is in trouble financially due to legacy healthcare costs for their retirees. Trump was correct in that this agency should not be subsidizing Amazon and their free delivery promises of past, which also is one of the companies that will pay for their employees to travel for abortions if outlawed in their state.
Excellent commentary by Dr. Shaw. Sunday has been secularized and Groff deserves credit for standing up for his beliefs, demonstrating rare courage.
(An aside: the soi-disant postal service, slow and undependable, is hardly a critical government operation (on which we spend millions to bring us largely junk) in our day of email, telephones, etc.; it ought to be cut back severely.)
The rural areas depend on the postal service. I for one still mail checks.
You can opt out a lot of mail; I know the prescreened # on the bottom stopped my mother’s mail by a signicant amount:
How do I remove my name from mailing lists?
Anyone who wants to reduce the amount of prospect marketing mail they receive may register for the mail suppression service called DMAchoice provided by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which is independent of the United States Postal Service. To “Remove” your name from common mailing lists, you may register, along with a nominal processing fee:
Online registration: $2 fee for online processing
Mail-in registration: $3 fee, submit check or money order payable to ANA no cash, certified or registered mail:
DMAchoice
Consumer Preferences
P.O. Box 900
Cos Cob, CT 06807
This service will not eliminate all promotional mail. It does not apply to promotional mail from companies or organizations that consumers have an existing business relationship. It also does not apply to local retailers, restaurants, and political organizations. You should expect to see a major reduction in the overall volume of prospect promotional offers received. Please note that ANA is not the source of consumer names for marketing purposes. This opt-in mail suppression service is a tool to assist consumers in managing their marketing offers.
The ANA has additional information for consumers about compliance tools and best practices, you can also file a complaint, or email ethics@ana.net.
In addition, the three major credit-reporting services (Equifax, Experian & TransUnion) also offer a name removal option for prescreened offers at: 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688) or visit http://www.optoutprescreen.com.
So? Nice reporting, but it goes no further, although good food for thought. Thanks.
Working on the Sabbath? I’m reminded of the warning of Our Lady of LaSalette. I also can’t help but think about the visitations to Sr. Marie de St. Pierre. If you are not familiar with these things, please spend a moment to look them up. There is too uncanny a suffering we endure these days to ascribe our times to be a mere coincidence. Deo Gratius!
An even more interesting question is why the Christian churches, exceptions allowed. mostly ignore this. Jewish baseball players including Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg, have refused to play on high holy days. Yet, despite the Catholic predominance in baseball due to the plethora of Latin players, I have never heard of any Catholic ballplayer taking his own faith that seriously. Not a single one. Isn’t there something embarrassing about that, that no Catholic in the two leagues, none of them, are even willing to stand up and say, for instance, “No, I won’t play on Good Friday or Easter”? A few years ago the Brewers and Pirates even had an ugly brawl on the day of our Lord’s Resurrection, including a dangerous sucker punch to the back of a player’s head by the Brewers catcher, a Catholic.
I wonder about that too, Mark. What happened to people like Eric Liddel? Every school seems to have sports related events or awards ceremonies on Sundays. It’s ridiculous.
I note that Mr. Groff is an Evangelical Christian, not a Catholic. To my knowledge, Evangelical and Reform Christians hold their Sabbath services on Sunday.
The Catholic Church has diluted the significance of Sunday by accepting Saturday Mass as an alternative. Before we bemoan the secularization of Sunday (and much else, of course), we should look in the mirror.
The church has traditionally had Vigil Masses, especially at Easter, & for other Holy Days, for centuries. The practice died out, but began again after Vatical II. Due to this history, the obligation was never really “diluted”, just altered somewhat. The 3rd Commandment still applies – Keep Holy the Lord’s Day. Some of us do have to work on Sundays, so the option for a vigil Mass is a big plus. Personally, my family never misses Mass, & we attend on most Sundays, with the exceptions being the Great Easter Vigil, & the Christmas Midnight Mass. At least we, as Catholics, have the option of 4-5 possible Mass times on a weekend. This actually makes it easier to fulfill our obligation to our Lord.
Regarding this story and some posted comments. Its entirely possible a baseball player can catch a Saturday evening Mass instead of Sunday. The post office can grandfather into employment those who claim a religious exemption for Sunday. And then have new employees sign documents to the effect he will work Sundays. Or pay willing wirkers overtime to fill the Sunday slots.
But why at all? Bezos has 200 billion but the mailman is just making a living. Why are we helping the ultra-rich and calling it helping the USPS. THis man is USPS and you are NOT helping him.
Get Religion has a number of articles on this case (which I better go and read now).
I understand the argument about Saturday vigil Mass helping some people. Nevertheless, I think its revival (if that’s what it was) since VII has had the effect of diminishing the significance of Sunday. I’m not the first person to have made this observation. I think one step might be to reduce the number of Sunday vigil Masses where possible (and call them that).
P.S.
Re comment about Catholics being lucky to have 4-5 options for Mass attendance. More options may help the already committed but just confuse (not sure that’s the right word – disorient maybe) the less firm.
Why do we say “Sabbath for the Jewish “ when Christ said Sabbath was made for Man?? …. The Seventh day was instituted in Genesis and Adam kept it … the Jewish race did not exist then.
So when we call Sunday “the Sabbath “ we are confused.
We are worshiping God in tradition, and not according to true Biblical knowledge