On August 27, 2025, the Arlington Catholic Herald, published by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, released an article titled “Rest from Labor on Sunday.” In it, the Catholic Church emphasizes that Sunday rest is a right and that society must affirm and safeguard this day for worship, family life, and the well-being of workers. The article also warns against the secularization of Sunday, noting that it has become just like any other workday filled with sports, shopping, and business, and urges people to resist all efforts to devalue Sunday, which it calls the day of sacred rest.
The Arlington Catholic Herald expressed the following:
• “The Catholic Church proclaims the dignity of work and workers … A critical demand of church leaders through the decades has been ensuring that workers are free on the Sabbath to worship God and to be with their loved ones.” [1]
• “As Pope John Paul II wrote in ‘Laborem Exercens,’ his encyclical on human work, workers have a ‘right to rest’ that ‘involves a regular weekly rest comprising at least Sunday.’ This Sunday rest from work would allow the worker to meet obligations to God on a day of worship.” [1]
• “It is tempting — and can often even feel necessary — to treat Sunday just like any other day of the week … shopping, working, answering emails, and doing the work that simply did not get done in the six workdays of the week.” [1]
• “School sports and similar activities — good as they may be in their own right — split families apart on Sundays as they race in different directions. Sunday can all too easily become merely the start of the new work week.” [1]
• “Maybe the start of this new season of busyness is a time to resolve to keep Sundays holy, to keep them sacred, and to appreciate the wisdom of a God who rested on the seventh day.” [1]
• “I also hope, that as each week passes, you will also have the chance to celebrate the holy rest of Sundays as the extraordinary comes to each week of our ordinary time.” [1]
This is a clear call to reclaim Sunday as the day of rest. To strengthen this claim as a moral obligation, the article appeals to the creation account—where God rested on the seventh day—but misapplies it to Sunday instead of Saturday. This distortion reinforces the prophetic warning that Sunday will be elevated as both a civil and religious obligation, with restrictions placed on what activities may or may not be permitted on that day.
While the tone of the Arlington Catholic Herald may seem passive, it nonetheless supports the very essence of what blue laws are designed to do—restrict Sunday activities in society. The article foreshadows the coming Sunday laws by exalting the counterfeit Sabbath above the true Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh day (Exodus 20:8–11). In promoting Sunday as the divinely appointed day of rest, Catholic teaching once again substitutes man-made tradition for God’s law (Daniel 7:25).
Revelation 14:7 calls people to “worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters,” a direct reference to the fourth commandment. This is the obedience God is calling for—a reminder that genuine worship can only be realized when we follow His Word. Sunday laws will ultimately become the dividing line between those who worship the Creator and those who receive the mark of the beast. Even now, the groundwork for this final test is being laid, as increasing pressure is placed upon society to honor Sunday, which will result in legal enactment.
Sources
[1] https://www.catholicherald.com/article/columns/rest-from-labor-on-sundays-labor-day/
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