Catholic Authors Confirm Change of Sabbath by the Church

The following quotations by Catholic authors confirm that the Catholic Church takes full responsibility for changing the Law of God:

"It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest [from the Bible Sabbath] to 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 Protestantism of Today, 1868, p. 213).

"From this same Catholic Church you [Protestants] have accepted your Sunday, and that Sunday, as the Lord's day, she has handed down as a tradition; and the entire Protestant world has accepted it as a tradition, for you have not an iota of Scripture to establish it. Therefore that which you have accepted as your rule of faith, inadequate as it of course is, as well as your Sunday you have accepted on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church," (D.B. Ray, The Papal Controversy, p. 179).

"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 dated February 10, 1920).

"All of us believe many things in regard to religion that we do not find in the Bible. For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles changed [the day of worship] from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the Church outside the Bible," (Article, "To Tell You The Truth," The Catholic Virginian, October 3, 1947, p. 9).

"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 is purely a creation of the Catholic Church," (John Gilmary Shea, American Catholic Quarterly, January 1883, p. 139).

"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 accepting the Bible, in observing the Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope," (Our Sunday Visitor, February 5, 1950).

"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," (Priest Thomas Enright, CSSR, President of Redemptorist College, Kansas City, Missouri, in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, February 18, 1884).

"Question -- By what authority did the Church substitute Sunday for Saturday? Answer -- The Church substituted Sunday for Saturday by the plentitude of that divine power which Jesus Christ bestowed upon her," (Peter F. Geiermann, The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, 1923 edition, p. 59).

"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 [by observing it]; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church," (Priest Henry Tuberville, An Abridgement of the Christian Doctrine, p. 58).

"Question -- What Bible authority is there for changing the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week? Who gave the Pope the authority to change a command of God? Answer -- If the Bible is the only guide for the Christian, 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?" (Bertrand Conway, The Question Box, 1903 edition, pp. 254-255, 1915 edition, p. 179).

"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," (Catholic Mirror, September 2 and December 23, 1893).

"The Catholic Church . . . by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday," (The Catholic Mirror, September 23, 1893).

"The Catholic Church of its own infallible authority created Sunday a holy day to take the place of the Sabbath of the old law," (Kansas City Catholic, February 9, 1893).

"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 [Catholic] Church . . . whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it 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' [Matthew 15:6]," (The Brotherhood of St. Paul, The Clifton Tracts, Vol. 4, tract 4, p. 15).