More Comments on the Saturday-Sunday Sabbath Issue Monsignor Louis Segur, Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today (1868), p. 213 "The observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] church." John Gilmary Shea, American Catholic Quarterly Review, January, 1883. "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 ."  The Catholic Mirror, official publication of James Cardinal Gibbons, Sept. 23, 1893. "The Catholic Church, . . . by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday." The Catholic National, July, 1895. "The Pope is not only the representative of Jesus Christ, but he is Jesus Christ Himself, hidden under veil of flesh."  The Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August, 1900. "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."  Priest Brady, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, N.J. "News", March 18, 1903. "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."  Daniel Ferres, ed., Manual of Christian Doctrine (1916), p.67.  Also in Henry Tuberville, An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine (1833 approbation), p.58 "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.' Albert Smith, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for Cardinal Gibbons in a letter, February 10, 1920. "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."  Martin J. Scott, Things Catholics Are Asked About (1927),p. 136. "Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that worship should be changed from Saturday to Sunday .... 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 of Purgatory long before the Bible was made. We have, therefore, the same authority for Purgatory as we have for Sunday."   John Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies (1936), vol. 1, 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 Catholic Universe Bulletin, August 14, 1942, page 4. "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."  Catholic Virginian Oct. 3, 1947, p. 9, art. "To Tell You the Truth." "For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed 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[Roman Catholic] church outside the Bible." Our Sunday Visitor, February 5, 1950. "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."   Peter Geiermann, C.S.S.R., The Converts Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (1957), p. 50. "Question: Which is the Sabbath day? "Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day. "Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday? "Answer. We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."   S.D. Moana, Storia della Domenica, 1969, pages 366-367. Not the Creator of the Universe, In Geneses 2:1-3, —but the Catholic Church "can claim the honor of having granted man a pause to his work every seven days."     Peter R. Kraemer, Catholic Church Extension Society (1975),Chicago, Illinois. "Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts: "1) That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man. "2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws. "It is always somewhat laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible."   Fr. Leo Broderick, Saint Catherine Catholic Church Sentinel, Algonac, Michigan, May 21, 1995. "Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the Church ever did, happened in the first century. The holy day, the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday. 'The Day of the Lord' (dies Dominica) was chosen, not from any directions noted in the Scriptures, but from the Church's sense of its own power. The day of resurrection, the day of Pentecost, fifty days later, came on the first day of the week. So this would be the new Sabbath. People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become 7th Day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy." It is quite clear that the Catholic position regarding the seventh day Sabbath has been unbending for over 400 years. Pleased to embarrass the Protestant world with their illogical departure from Biblical doctrine, the Roman Church has until very recent years continued to ridicule "the estranged bretheren" in this matter. Surprisingly, on May 31, 1998 the Vatican took a strange new approach that dramatically altered its historical stand on the Saturday-Sunday issue.  Pope John Paul II delivered his apostolic letter, Dies Domini, to the Catholic clergy.  Subtitled "On Keeping the Lord's Day Holy", this treatise is composed of four chapters and 87 sections that appeal, not to the traditionally arrogant stance of Church authority, but to all the scriptural arguments previously used by Protestants! The Dies Domini document concludes with the urging of all Christians to become politically responsible in order that they may "ensure that civil legislation respects their duty to keep Sunday holy."  This language is alarming and indicative of Rome's true and unchanged modus operandi.  The switch from Tradition to Scripture merely disarms her real intent to ultimately secure state support.  A return to the Dark Ages, when the Church Universal ruled the courts and thrones of Europe, when Inquisition fires cleansed the land of heretics, when individual freedom of conscious and religious liberty was denounced as a threat and attacked by countless crusades--yes,  the end of church-state separation would restore the papacy to it's former "glory" and fully restore its deadly wound.