The Issue of Authority

In 2003, a website (www.immaculateheart.com/maryonline) appeared on the web for a very brief time containing a thought-provoking document entitled Rome’s Challenge. By 2004, it was taken down and can no longer be found on the web. However, you can view a copy of the content on our site

This document was a reprint of four editorials printed in 1893 by the Catholic Mirror of Baltimore Maryland. The Catholic Mirror was the official organ of Cardinal Gibbons and the Vatican in the United States. These articles appeared under the Cardinal’s official sanction and were an expression of the Catholic Church to Protestantism as a whole in response to a tract printed by the Seventh-day Adventist International Religious Liberty Association entitled Appeal and Remonstrance which had been printed in an effort to officially register its complaint with the government and people of the United States for business closures on Sunday.

The editors of MaryOnline+ write this:

The challenge issued by Rome over 100 years ago remains: Either the Catholic Church is right, or the Seventh-day Adventists are right. There can be no other choice. And if one choose neither, then the whole doctrine of Sola Scriptura collapses, and with it, the pillar upon which all of Protestantism stands.

What one has left is an invented religion, an invented God, and an invented set of beliefs that suits man’s purpose and not the Creator’s. Like Satan and Luther before them, Protestants have spoken the creed. In action and in thought, if not in word. “I Will Not Serve…”

The challenge remains—yet you will find no response, not from any Evangelical, Fundamentalist, or mainline Protestant denomination anywhere. Ultimately, it is the clear authority of the Catholic Church as vested in Her by God Himself, that rules the day.

The Reformation was based on the argument of Sola Scriptura—the Scriptures alone. But during the Catholic Council of Trent, this argument failed because Protestants weren’t prepared to give up the Catholic tradition of Sunday. It was a major blow to the Reformation and to the work of reform and progress God was initiating. If Protestants had been willing to take a Biblical stand on this issue, how different would history have been?

With strong statements such as these, what are we to think?

The issue here is not the day of the week. The issue is authority. Whose authority will we fall under—the Bible (John 14:15; Revelation 14:12) or human tradition (Matthew 5:19; Mark 7:9)?

The Roman Catholic Church keeps the Ten Commandments as taught by St. Augustine, which are different from those found in the Bible. Catholic Catechism says this:

The division and numbering of the Commandments have varied in the course of history. The present catechism follows the division of the Commandments established by St. Augustine, which has become traditional in the Catholic Church.

The Sabbath Commandment—the one removed by Catholicism—is the Commandment that serves as a seal, authenticating the law and showing the authority of God.

However, the Catholic Church sees Sunday as its mark of authority. Rome freely admits and even proudly proclaims that it is responsible for Sunday worship, asserting that all other Protestants who worship on Sunday are under Rome’s authority whether or not they deem it so.