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  Lord's Day

 The Council of Trent
and the Counter-Reformation

The Council of Trent convened in the late 16th century between 1545 and 1563 by the Catholic Church to halt progress of the Protestant Reformation and formulate the fundamentals of Catholic Creed. Many questions had been raised across Europe by the Protestant Reformers. These reformers, from Wycliffe to Luther to Zwingle, charged that the Mother Church had apostatized from "the truth delivered to the saints" and preserved "in the written word of God."  Trent hurled 125 anathemas of eternal damnation against the Bible-believing Christians whose constant appeal and cry was to  Sola Scriptura,  "The Bible and the Bible only."

Traditions established by "Holy fathers,  popes and bishops" were held by the Church as equal to and even superior to Scripture. A crisis developed within the council as the ultra-Catholic party stood behind tradition as the only way to effectively condemn the Reformation, while a strong liberal segment favored abandoning "tradition" and adopting scripture as "the sole standard of appeal."

Debate raged for many intense years until the Archbishop Reggio of Calabra spoke on 18 January, 1562.  He suggested that Protestantism could be totally discredited by using the very scriptures they embrace and defend as evidence against them.  John Eck, the Catholic priest who debated with Martin Luther in 1533, used the same argument: If you Protestants really believe the Bible, and the Bible only, then why don't you keep the Bible Sabbath instead of honoring Sunday, the day Rome chose to replace it?

His speech is recorded in Heinrich Julius Holzmann's Kanon und Tradition , published in Ludwigsburg, Germany, in 1859, p. 263.  In the excerpt cited here he observed that...

"The written Word explicitly enjoins the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath.  They do not observe the seventh day, but reject it!  If they do truly hold the scripture alone as their standard, they would be observing the seventh day as is enjoined in the scripture throughout!  Yet they not only reject the observance of the Sabbath enjoined in the written word, but they have adopted and do practice the observance of Sunday, for which they have only the tradition of the Church... The doctrine of "scripture and tradition" as essential, is fully established, the Protestants themselves being the judges."

Some have pointed to a second recording of the 18 January presentation by Archbishop Reggio that does not allegedly reference the Sabbath-Sunday plot. The source given for this is the Nova Collectio Section 217. Session XVII. Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractuum.. Tomus Octavus. Actorum Pars Quinta . Translated by Freiburg: Published by B. Herder, in 1919, p. 293-299.  On this basis, argument is made that the account given by Holzmann is spurious. Regardless of this, the tone and tack of the Catholic Church has been consistent with Reggio's oratory, apocraphal or not!

For 400 years the Catholic Church has boasted of its claim to have changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday as evidence of its authority to do so and its supremacy within Christendom. Here is a small sampling of Catholic literature addressing this very issue:

"The Sabbath, the most glorious day in the law, has been changed into the Lord's day.... These and other similar matters have not ceased by virtue of Christ's teaching (for He says He has come to fulfill the law, not to destroy it), but they have been changed by the authority of the church."
(Archbishop Gaspare de Fosso, quotes from the Council of Trent preceedings in Sacrorum Conciliorum nova amplissima Collectio, 1902, vol. 33, pp. 529,530.)

"It is curious to recall that this observance of Sunday, which is the only principle of Protestantism, not only does not rest upon the Bible, but is in flagrant contradiction with the letter of the Bible requiring the rest of the Sabbath, or Saturday. It was the Catholic Church which, by the authority of Jesus Christ, has transferred this rest to Sunday."
(Monsignor Louis Segur, Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today, 1868 ed., p. 207.)

"The Catholic Church, ... by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday... Reason and sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible."
(Catholic Cardinal James Gibbons, The Catholic Mirror, Dec. 23, 1893.)

"You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify."
(Catholic Cardinal James Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers, 1917 ed., pp. 72, 73.)

"If protestants were following the Bible, they would worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church."
(Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, letter of Feb. 10, 1920.)

"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."
(Martin J. Scott, Things Catholics Are Asked About, 1927 ed., p. 136.)

"If we consulted the Bible only, we should still have to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is, Saturday."
(John Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies, 1936 ed., vol. 1, p. 51.)

Jesus and Tradition
Jesus asked the established Church of His day: "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?" (Matthew 15:3).  The Jewish leaders had enacted a legal loophole in their day that allowed them to dodge probate inheritance rights to their surviving parents!  They spurned the 5th commandment's admonition to "Honor your father and mother."

Jesus concluded: "Thus have you made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition...In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." (Matthew 15:6,9). 

The Catholic Church perpetrated tradition over the Word of God. And when Protestants endorse worshipping on the Sun-day, they support the Roman Church and her tradition.

This tradition includes a revised version of the Ten Commandements as translated in the Duoay Version (shown in the table below on the right side).  The second commandment is removed entirely because of its embarrassing preclusion of image worship; the fourth is severely abbreviated; and the tenth is split into two parts to maintain a count of ten.

Well, here they are: Original Recipe and less filling Law Lite:

The LAW of God	The LAW Revised
I	I
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.	Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.
II	II
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.	Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
III	III
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold Him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.	Remeber that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.
IV	IV
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.	Honor thy father and thy mother.
V	V
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.	Thou shalt not kill.
VI	VI
Thou shalt not kill.	Thou shalt not commit adultery.
VII	VII
Thou shalt not commit adultery.	Thou shalt not steal.
VIII	VIII
Thou shalt not steal.	Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
IX	IX
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.	Thous shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.
X	X
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.	Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.