IDLENESS. - From the Latin otium, in the generic sense it is abstention from work (for the Romans, abstention from public affairs or from the family, the only occupations worthy of a free citizen). It is a lawful act if it remains within the limits of necessary and useful rest. The more it extends over time and becomes habitual, the more or less serious a danger it constitutes, insofar as it is fertile ground for the proliferation of temptations and the arising of vices. The Eccli. indeed gives this warning: «Put him to work (the servant) so that he may not remain idle, for unemployment does much harm» (33,28: trans. A. Vaccari, La S. Bibbia, V, I Libri poetici, Firenze 1950, p. 247). It becomes a vice and a sin when the work from which one abstains is among one’s personal duties. Its gravity is proportionate to the importance of the duties neglected.
A form of idleness may also be seen in that busy activity which consists in devoting oneself from one task to another without purpose or conviction, with great and useless waste of those energies given by God to man in order to attain his natural and supernatural end. In order to avoid the sad consequences of idleness, however, it is not right to fall into the opposite defect. Men, that is, must not devote themselves to temporal activities so wholly and exclusively as to neglect contemplation of supernatural ends and goods (Lc. 14, 16 sgg.). Work, together with rest and meditation, must be one of the means of sanctification and not hinder II.