Rome's Challenge

Why Do Protestants Keep Sunday?

February 24, 1893, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists adopted certain resolutions appealing to the government and people of the United States from the decision of the Supreme Court declaring this to be a Christian nation, and from the action of Congress in legislating upon the subject of religion, and remonstrating against the principle and all the consequences of the same. In March, 1893, the International Religious Liberty Association printed these resolutions in a tract entitled, "Appeal and Remonstrance." On receipt of one of these, the editor of the Catholic Mirror of Baltimore, Md., published a series of four editorials, which appeared in that paper, September 2, 9, 16, and 23, 1893. The Catholic Mirror is the official organ of Cardinal Gibbons and the papacy in the United States. These articles, therefore, although not written by the Cardinal's own hand, appear under his official sanction, and are the expression of the papacy on this subject, are the open challenge of the papacy to Protestantism, and the demand of the papacy that Protestants shall render to the papacy an account of why they keep Sunday, and also of how they keep it.

The proceeding matter (excepting the footnotes, the note in brackets signed "ED.," and the two Appendixes) is a verbatim reprint of these editorials, including the title.