Rome's Challenge
Why Do Protestants Keep Sunday?
Sections
Most Christians assume that Sunday is the biblically
approved day of worship. The Roman catholic church protests that it
transferred Christian worship from the biblical Sabbath (Saturday) to
Sunday, and that to try to argue that the change was made in the Bible
is both dishonest and a denial of Catholic authority. If Protestantism
wants to base its teachings only on the Bible, it should worship on
Saturday.
A number of years ago the Catholic Mirror ran a series of articles discussing the right of the Protestant churches to worship on Sunday. The articles stressed that unless one was willing to accept the authority of the Catholic Church to designate the day of worship, the Christian should observe Saturday. This is a reprint of those articles.
February 24, 1893, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists adopted certain resolutions appealing to the government and people of the United States from the decision of the Supreme Court declaring this to be a Christian nation, and from the action of Congress in legislating upon the subject of religion, and remonstrating against the principle and all the consequences of the same. In March, 1893, the International Religious Liberty Association printed these resolutions in a tract entitled, "Appeal and Remonstrance." On receipt of one of these, the editor of the Catholic Mirror of Baltimore, Md., published a series of four editorials, which appeared in that paper, September 2, 9, 16, and 23, 1893. The Catholic Mirror is the official organ of Cardinal Gibbons and the papacy in the United States. These articles, therefore, although not written by the Cardinal's own hand, appear under his official sanction, and are the expression of the papacy on this subject, are the open challenge of the papacy to Protestantism, and the demand of the papacy that Protestants shall render to the papacy an account of why they keep Sunday, and also of how they keep it.
The preceding matter (excepting the footnotes, the note in brackets signed "ED.," and the two Appendixes) is a verbatim reprint of these editorials, including the title.