Quick Q&A: What do church leaders say about changing the Sabbath to Sunday?

Answer: The history of the change and the admissions are stunning. Here are just a few below.

SABBATH DAY QUOTES: You can’t find the Sabbath being changed in scriptures so how did the change to Sunday happen? The information is easy to find. Here are just a few.

“I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can 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 a reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic Church.” — Father T. Enright, C.S.S.R. of the Redemptoral College, Kansas City, in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, February 18, 1884, printed in History of the Sabbath, p. 802

“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’ was chosen, not from any direction noted in the Scriptures, but from the (Catholic) Church’s sense of its own power ... People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become 7th Day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy.” St. Catherine Church Sentinel, Algonac, Michigan, May 21, 1995.

“It was the Catholic church which...has transferred this rest to Sunday in remembrance of the resurrection of our Lord. Therefore 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 The Protestantism of Today, p. 213.

“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.” Priest Brady, in an address reported in The News, Elizabeth, New Jersey, March 18, 1903.

“Sunday is a Catholic institution and its claim 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.” Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August 1900.

“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.” Catholic Virginian, October 3, 1947, p. 9, Article: “To Tell You the Truth.”

“Most Christians assume that Sunday is the biblically approved day of worship. The 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.” Rome’s Challenge www.immaculateheart.com/maryonline Dec 2003

“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 (Roman Catholic) Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days as holy days.” John Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies, 1936 edition, vol. 1, p. 51.

“Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained, is the sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 321.” Chambers Encyclopedia, Article: “Sunday.”

The following is what Constantine’s law required of the people... “Let all the judges and town people, and the occupation of all trades rest on the venerable day of the sun; but let those who are situated in the country, freely and at full liberty attend to the business of agriculture; because it often happens that no other day is so fit for sowing corn and planting vines; lest the critical moment being let slip, men should lose the commodities granted by Heaven.”
Translated from the original edict in Latin, now in Harvard College U.S.A. - Also in Codex Justinianus, lib. 3, tit. 12, 3; translated in Phillip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, p. 380.

Not long after Constantine’s first Sunday Law of A.D. 321, the Roman church made it official church doctrine by declaring it was a ‘Jewish day’. This church doctrine demanded all Christians to break Commandment #4 by working on Sabbath. “Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday [in the original: sabbato, shall not be idle on the Sabbath], but shall work on that day; but the Lord’s day they shall especially honour, and as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If, however, they are found Judaizing, they shall be shut out [anathema — excommunicated] from Christ.” Council of Laodicea, c. A.D. 337, Canon 29, quoted in C.J. Hefele’s A History of the Councils of the Church, Vol. 2, p. 316. - Also in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1899 Edition, Vol. XXIII, page 654.

There are just a few things to chew on. The Sabbath was changed by the Roman Catholic Church 300 years after Christ’s death and resurrection. Do you think that all of the other Sunday keeping churches realize they are practicing a major change or doctrine of the Catholic church by observing Sunday as the Sabbath?

"And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men”  (Matthew 15:9).