"Sunday is a Catholic institution, and its claims to observance can be defended only on Catholic principles... From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first."
--The Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August, 1900.
"Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the (Roman Catholic) Church, has no good reasons for its Sunday theory, and ought logically to keep Saturday as the Sabbath."
--John Gilmary Shea, American Catholic Quarterly Review, January, 1883.
"It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and all other Christians, that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church."
--Priest Brady, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, N.J. "News," March 18, 1903.
"Ques.- Have you any other way of proving that the (Catholic) Church has power to institute festivals of precept (to command holy days)?"
"Ans.- Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her: she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority."
--Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism, page 176.
"Reason and common sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible."
--The Catholic Mirror, December 23, 1893.
"God simply gave His (Catholic) Church the power to set aside whatever day or days, she would deem suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days, as holy days."
--Vincent J. Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations , page 2.
"Protestants...accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change... But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that...in observing the Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope."
--Our Sunday Visitor, February 5, 1950.
Not the Creator of the Universe, in Genesis 2:1-3,--but the Catholic Church "can claim the honor of having granted man a pause to his work every seven days."
--S.D. Mosna, Storia della Domenica, 1969, pages 366, 367.
"If Protestants would follow the Bible, they should worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church."
--Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for the Cardinal in a letter, February 10, 1920.
"It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest (from the Bible Sabbath) to the Sunday... Thus the observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the (Catholic) Church."
--Monsignor Louis Segur, Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today, page 213.
"We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."
--Peter Geiermann, CSSR, A Doctrinal Catechism, 1957 edition, page 50.
"We Catholics, then, have precisely the same authority for keeping Sunday holy instead of Saturday as we have for every other article of our creed, namely, the authority of the Church...whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it (Sunday sacredness) in the Bible, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else. Both you and we do, in fact, follow tradition in this matter; but we follow it, believing it to be a part of God's word, and the (Catholic) Church to be its divinely appointed guardian and interpreter; you follow it (the Catholic Church), denouncing it all the time as a fallible and treacherous guide, which often 'makes the commandments of God of none effect' (quoting Matthew 15:6)."
--The Brotherhood of St. Paul, The Clifton Tracts, Vol. 4, tract 4, page 15.
"The Church changed the observance of the Sabbath to Sunday by right of the divine, infallible authority given to her by her founder, Jesus Christ. The Protestant claiming the Bible to be the only guide of faith, has no warrant for observing Sunday. In this matter the Seventh-day Adventist is the only consistent Protestant."
--The Catholic Universe Bulletin, August 14, 1942, page 4.
"QUESTION- How prove you that the church hath power to command feasts and holy days?"
"ANSWER- By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of, and therefore they fondly contradict themselves by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other Feasts commanded by the same church."
"QUESTION- How prove you that?"
"ANSWER- Because by keeping Sunday they acknowledge the Church's power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin."
--The Douay Catechism, page 59.
The Catechismus Romanus was commanded by the Council of Trent and published by the Vatican Press, by order of Pope Pius V, in 1566. This catechism for priests says: "It pleased the church of God, that the religious celebration of the Sabbath day should be transferred to 'the Lord's day.' "
--Catechism of the Council of Trent (Donovan's translation, 1867), part 3, chap. 4, p. 345.
"The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday."
--The Catholic Mirror, September 23, 1893.
"Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act.... And the act is a MARK of her ecclesiastical authority in religious things."
--H.F. Thomas, Chancellor of Cardinal Gibbons.
"1. Is Saturday the 7th day according to the Bible & the 10 Commandments?
"I answer yes.
"2. Is Sunday the first day of the week & did the Church change the 7th day--Saturday--for Sunday, the 1st day?
"I answer yes.
"3. Did Christ change the day?
"I answer no! Faithfully yours,
"J. Card. Gibbons"
--Gibbons' Autograph letter.
"Prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church says, No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week. And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in reverent obedience to the command of the Holy Catholic Church."
--Thomas Enright, CSSR, President, Redemptorist College (Roman Catholic), Kansas City, Mo., February 18, 1884.
"Ques.- Which is the Sabbath day?
"Ans.- Saturday is the Sabbath day.
"Ques.- Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
"Ans.- We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."
--Peter Geiermann, The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (1946 ed.), p. 50. Geiermann received the "apostolic blessing" of Pope Pius X on his labors, Jan. 25, 1910.
"You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify."
--James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers (1917 ed.), pp. 72, 73.
"Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that worship should be changed from Saturday to Sunday. The fact is that the Church was in existence for several centuries before the Bible was given to the world. The Church made the Bible, the Bible did not make the Church.
"Now the Church...instituted, by God's authority, Sunday as the day of worship. This same Church, by the same divine authority, taught the doctrine or Purgatory long before the Bible was made. We have, therefore, the same authority for Purgatory as we have for Sunday."
--Martin J. Scott, Things Catholics Are Asked About (1927 ed.), p. 136.
"For ages all Christian nations looked to the Catholic Church, and, as we have seen, the various states enforced by law her ordinances as to worship and cessation of Labor on Sunday. Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the church, has no good reason for its Sunday theory, and ought logically, to keep Saturday as the Sabbath."
"The State, in passing laws for the due Sanctification of Sunday, is unwittingly acknowledging the authority of the Catholic Church and carrying out more or less faithfully its prescriptions.
"The Sunday, as a day of the week set apart for the obligatory public worship of Almighty God, to be sanctified by a suspension of all servile labor, trade, and worldly avocations and by exercises of devotion, is purely a creation of the Catholic Church."
--The American Catholic Quarterly Review, January, 1883, pp. 152, 139. [Emphasis Supplied.]
"If we consulted the Bible only, we should still have to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is Saturday."
--John Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies, vol. 1 (1936 ed.), p. 51.
"Some theologians have held that God likewise directly determined the Sunday as the day of worship in the New Law, that He Himself has explicitly substituted the Sunday for the Sabbath. But this theory is now entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God simply gave His Church the power to set aside whatever day or days, she would deem suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days, as holy days....
"The fact, however, that Christ until His death, and His Apostles at least for a time after Christ's Ascension, observed the Sabbath is evidence enough that our Lord Himself did not substitute the Lord's day for the Sabbath, during His lifetime on earth."
--Vincent J. Kelly (Catholic), Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations (1943 ed.), pp. 2, 19, 20.
"If Protestants observe the first day of the week are they in that act recognizing the authority of the Catholic Church?... It looks that way, since the custom they observe is of the Church and from the Church."
--C.F. Thomas, chancellor to Cardinal Gibbons, replying in a letter to an inquiry addressed to the cardinal, February 8, 1898.
"All things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we (the church) have transferred to the Lord's day."
--Commentary on the Psalms, in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 23, col. 1171.
"Q.-- Has the (Catholic) Church a power to make any alterations in the commandments of God?
"A-- ...Instead of the seventh day, and other festivals appointed to the old law, the Church has prescribed the Sundays and holydays to be set apart for God's worship; and these we are now obliged to keep in consequence of God's commandments, instead of the ancient Sabbath."
--Rt. Rev. Dr. Challoner, The Catholic Christian Instructed (1853), p. 204.
"The Church...after changing the day of rest from the Jewish Sabbath, or seventh day of the week, to the first, made the third commandment refer to Sunday as the day to be kept holy as the Lord's day."
--The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, page 153.
"Nothing is said in the Bible about the change of the Lord's day from Saturday to Sunday. We know of the change only from the tradition of the Church--a fact handed down to us from earliest times by the living voice of the Church. That is why we find so illogical the attitude of many non-Catholics, who say that they will believe nothing unless they can find it in the Bible and yet will continue to keep Sunday as the Lord's day on the say-so of the Catholic Church."
--Salvation History and the Commandments, page 294, 1963 edition, by Rev. Leo. J. Trese and John J. Castlelot, S.S.
"The Catholic Church transferred the observance from the seventh to the first day of the week.... The Catholic Church deemed it more fitting to appoint this day, rather than Saturday, the festival day of Christians."
--This Is Catholicism, 1959 edition, John Walsh, S.J., p. 325.
"Why did the Church change the Lord's day from the Sabbath to Sunday? The Church, using the power of binding and loosing which Christ gave to the Pope, changed the Lord's Day to Sunday."
--Life in Christ--Instructions in the Catholic Faith by Killgallen and Weber, 1958, p. 243.
"If the Bible is the only guide for the Christian, then the Seventh-day Adventist is right in observing the Saturday with the Jew... Is it not strange that those who make the Bible their only teacher, should inconsistently follow in this matter the tradition of the Catholic Church?"
The Question Box by Cardinal Gibbons, p. 179.
"The Bible does not contain all the teachings of the Catholic religion, nor does it formulate all the duties of its members. Take, for instance, the matter of Sunday observance, attendance at divine service, and abstention from unnecessary servile work on that day. This is a matter upon which our Protestant neighbors have for many years laid great emphasis; yet nowhere in the Bible is the Sunday designated as the Lord's day; the day mentioned is the Sabbath, the last day of the week. The early Church, conscious of her authority to teach in the name of Christ, deliberately changed the day to Sunday."
--Understanding the Catholic Faith by Rev. John A. O'Brien, 1955 edition, p. 13.
"But since Saturday, not Sunday, is specified in the Bible, isn't it curious that non-Catholics who profess to take their religion directly from the Bible and not from the Church, observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Yes, of course it is inconsistent; but this change was made about fifteen centuries before Protestantism was born, and by that time the custom was universally observed. They have continued the custom, even though it rests upon the authority of the Catholic Church and not upon an explicit text in the Bible. That observance remains as a reminder of the Mother Church from which the non-Catholic sects broke away--like a boy running away from home, but still carrying in his pocket a picture of his mother or a lock of her hair."
--The Faith of Millions, 1956, page 473.
Baptist: "There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will however be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament--absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week."
--Dr. E.T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manual.
Congregationalist: "It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath... The Sabbath was founded on specific, divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday... There is not a single line in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday."
--Dr. R.W. Dale, The Ten Commandments, pages 106,107.
Lutheran Free Church: "For when there could not be produced one solitary place in the Holy Scriptures which testified that either the Lord Himself or the apostles had ordered such a transfer of the Sabbath to Sunday, then it was not easy to answer the question: Who has transferred the Sabbath, and who has had the right to do it?"
--George Sverdrup, A New Day
Protestant Episcopal: "The day is now changed from the seventh to the first day...but as we meet with no Scriptural direction for the change, we may conclude it was done by the authority of the church."
--Explanation of Catechism.
Baptist: "The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath... There is no Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course, any Scriptural obligation."
--The Watchman.
Presbyterian: "There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law enters."
--Canon Eyton, in The Ten Commandments.
Anglican: "And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day."
--Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, pages 334, 336.
Disciples of Christ: "There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day 'the Lord's Day.' "
--Dr. D.H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, January 23, 1890.
Methodist: "it is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition."
--Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, pages 180, 181.
Episcopalian: "We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy, catholic, apostolic church of Christ."
--Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday.
Southern Baptist: "The sacred name of the Seventh day is Sabbath. This fact is too clear to require argument (Exodus 20:10 quoted)... On this point the plain teaching of the Word has been admitted in all ages... Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week--that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend that the first day supplanted the seventh."
--Joseph Judson Taylor, The Sabbath Question, pages 14-17, 41.
American Congregationalist: "The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament."
--Dr. Layman Abbot, in the Christian Union, June 26, 1890.
Christian Church: "Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath is changed, or that the Lord's Day came in the room of it."
--Alexander Campbell, in The Reporter, October 8, 1921.
Baptist: "To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' discussion with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, discussing it in some of its various aspects, freeing it from its false (Jewish traditional) glosses, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during the forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated. Nor, so far as we know, did the Spirit, which was given to bring to their remembrance all things whatsoever that He had said unto them, deal with this question. Nor yet did the inspired apostles in preaching the gospel, founding churches, counseling and instructing those founded, discuss or approach the subject.
"Of course I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of Paganism, and christened with the name of the sun-god, then adopted and sanctified by the Papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism."
--Dr. E.T. Hiscox, report of his sermon at the Baptist Minister's Convention, in the New York Examiner, November 16, 1893.
"The Lord's day was merely of ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment."
--Jeremy Taylor (Church of England), Ductor Dubitantium, part 1, book 2, chap. 2, rule 6, secs. 51, 59 (1850 ed.), vol. 9, pp. 458, 464.
"The Lord's Day is not sanctified by any specific command or by any inevitable inference. In all the New Testament there is no hint or suggestion of a legal obligation binding any man, whether saint or sinner, to observe the Day. Its sanctity arises only out of what it means to the true believer."
--J.J. Taylor (Baptist), The Sabbatic Question, p. 72.
"Because it was requisite to appoint a certain day, that the people might know when they ought to come together, it appears that the (Christian) Church did for that purpose appoint the Lord's day."
--Augsburg Confession, part 2, art. 7, in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (Scribners, 4th ed.), vol. 3, p. 69.
"And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day.... The reasons why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church, has enjoined it."
--Isaac Williams (Anglican), Plain Sermons on the Catechism, vol. 1, pp. 334, 336.
"They (the Catholics) allege the change of the Sabbath into the Lord's day, contrary, as it seemeth, to the Decalogue; and they have no example more in their mouths than the change of the Sabbath. They will needs have the Church's power to be very great, because it hath dispensed with a precept of the Decalogue."
--The Augsburg Confesson (Lutheran), part 2, art. 7, in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (Scribners, 4th ed.), vol. 3, p. 64.
"Some have tried to build the observance of Sunday upon apostolic command, whereas the apostles gave no command on the matter at all... The truth is, as soon as we appeal to the Literascripta (the literal writing) of the Bible, the Sabbatarians have the best of the arguments."
--Christian at Work, (Presbyterian), ed. April 19, 1883.
"It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism...nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week."
--The Methodist Theological Compendium.
"The observance of the Lord's day (Sunday) is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church." --The Augsburg Confession of Faith, (Lutheran).
"The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far from them and from the early apostolic church to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday."
--History of the Christian Religion and Church by Neander (Episcopalian), page 186.
Moody Bible Institute: "The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?"
--D.L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting, p. 47.
Pentecostal: " 'Why do we worship on Sunday? Doesn't the Bible teach us that Saturday should be the Lord's Day?'... Apparently we will have to seek the answer from some other source than the New Testament."
--David A. Womack, "Is Sunday the Lord's Day?" The Pentecostal Evangel, Aug. 9, 1959, No. 2361, p. 3.
Church of Christ: "Finally, we have the testimony of Christ on this subject. In Mark 2:27, he says: 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.' From this passage it is evident that the Sabbath was made not merely for the Israelites, as Paley and Hengstenberg would have us believe, but for man...that is, for the race. Hence we conclude that the Sabbath was sanctified from the beginning, and that it was given to Adam, even in Eden, as one of those primeval institutions that God ordained for the happiness of all men." --Robert Milligan, Scheme of Redemption, (St. Louis, The Bethany Press, 1962), p. 165.
Congregationalist: "The Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive church called the Sabbath."
--Dwight's Theology, Vol. 4, p. 401.
Episcopal: "Sunday (Dies Solis, of the Roman calendar, 'day of the sun,' because dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship.... No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined."
--"Sunday," A Religious Encyclopedia, Vol.3, (New York, Funk and Wagnalls, 1883) p. 2259.
Methodist: "Take the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day."
--Harris Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942.
Presbyterian: "Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand.... The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath."
--T.C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp. 474, 475.
Sunday sacredness is not commanded or practiced in the Bible.
In times of ignorance God winks at that which otherwise would be sin; but when light comes He commands men everywhere to repent. (Acts 17:30) The period during which the saints, times, and the law of God were to be in the hands of the papacy has expired (Daniel 7:25); the true light on the Sabbath question is now shining; and God is sending a message to the world, calling upon men to fear and worship Him, and to return to the observance of His holy rest day, the seventh-day Sabbath. (Revelation 14:6-12)
This is the last gospel message to be sent to the world before the Lord comes. Under it will be developed two classes of people, one having the mark of the beast (the Papacy), and the other keeping the commandments of God, and having His seal, the Sabbath of the fourth commandment.
(The above quotes were excerpted from What's Behind The New World Order? published by IBE Inc., Box 352, Jemison, AL 35085, U.S.A., Bible Readings for the Home, [contact the Adventist Book Center: 1-800-765-6955, or NEW LIFE, Dept. H, Box 55, Los Angeles, CA 90053], and The Beast, The Dragon, and The Woman and "The Mark of the Beast" (Amazing Facts Study Guide) published by Amazing Facts, P.O. Box 1058, Roseville, CA 95678-8058, U.S.A.)
Read this brief lesson on the Christian sabbath: Don't Be Fooled. Scroll down seven items and click on Open Lesson, or watch the video.
For further study, read Rome's Challenge: Why Do Protestants Keep Sunday?
