ROME'S CHALLENGE

Why Do Protestants Keep Sunday?

• Rome's Challenge: Part 1

• Rome's Challenge: Part 2

• Rome's Challenge - Printer-Friendly Version

   

  • You will need Adobe Acrobat to read the printer-friendly version of Rome's Challenge.

Download Free Program to read this article if you do not have the program.

NOTE: To store a PDF file on your computer, click your right mouse button over the title of the paper, then choose "save link as" or "save target as" to load the file anywhere on your computer.

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.

Over one hundred 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. Those articles are presented here in their entirety.

Photo copyright 1914 by Underwood & Underwood

James Cardinal Gibbons

Archbishop of Baltimore Maryland (1877-1921)

These articles, therefore, although not written by the Cardinal's own hand, appeared under his official sanction, and as the expression 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 following matter (excepting the footnotes, the editor's note in brackets beginning on page 25 and ending on page 27, and the two Appendixes) is a verbatim reprint of these editorials, including the title on page 2.

*Notre Dame University has the relevant issues of the Catholic Mirror archived on microfilm.

Web site for the *Archdiocese of Baltimore Maryland, which published the Catholic Mirror.