Who Really “Changed” the Sabbath?

January/February 1999
"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. We say by virtue of her divine mission, because He who called Himself the 'Lord of the Sabbath,' endowed her with His own power to teach, 'he that heareth you, heareth Me'; commanded all who believe in Him to hear her, under penalty of being placed with the 'heathen and publican'; and promised to be with her to the end of the world. She holds her charter as teacher from Him--a charter as infallible as perpetual. The Protestant world at its birth found the Christian Sabbath too strongly entrenched to run counter to its existence; it was therefore placed under the necessity of acquiescing in the arrangement, thus implying the Church's right to change the day, for over three hundred years. The Christian Sabbath is therefore to this day, the acknowledged offspring of the Catholic Church as spouse of the Holy Ghost, without a word of remonstrance from the Protestant world."--From the Catholic Mirror, Sept. 23, 1893; reprinted in Rome's Challenge, p. 24.

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 Council of Laodicea (A.D. 336) transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."-Peter Geiermann, CSSR, "A Doctrinal Catechism," 1957 ed., p. 50. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, translated by John A. McHugh and Charles J. Callan, stated, "But the Church of God has thought it well to transfer the celebration and observance of the Sabbath to Sunday" (p. 402).

Question. Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals or precepts?
Answer. 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."--Rev. Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism (New York: Edward Dunigan and Brothers, 1851), p. 174.

Question. By whom was it [the Sabbath] changed?
Answer. By the governors of the church, the apostles, who also kept it; for St. John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day (which was Sunday). Apoc. 1:10.

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; and by not keeping the rest [of the feasts] by her commanded, they again deny, in fact, the same power." --Rev. Henry Tuberville, D.D.R.C., An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine (New York: Edward Dunigan and Brothers, approved 1833), p.58.

And as one leading Protestant exponent of Sunday has written: "We must admit that we can point to no direct command that we cease observing the seventh day and begin using the first day."--Samuel A. Cartledge, "The Sabbath--The Lord's Day," in James P. Wesberry, comp., The Lord's Day, p. 100.

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