Untitled article by C. P. B.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · July 24, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 29

A Cardinal on Sunday Observance.

By C. P. B.

ACCORDING to the Mail and Express of the 8th inst., “Cardinal Gibbons, in regard to the sacredness of the Sabbath, and the desecration of the day by baseball and kindred sports, has this to say:”

I think that Sunday should be first of all a day devoted to religious worship, and, second, to innocent and healthful recreation, as being the only day in which the great masses of the people have time to seek relaxation from their work.

The danger is in the excess either way, and I entirely agree with Dr. Weld (pastor of the First Independent Christ's Church) in deprecating the closing of our art galleries, libraries, etc. absolutely, to the public, presupposing that a certain portion of the day is set apart for religious exercises.

I think that any recreation that will contribute to the physical, mental, and moral benefit and enjoyment of the masses should be encouraged. I think that baseball is a game that is in conflict with the quiet decorum and tranquillity that should characterize the observance of the Lord's day, and is too violent an exercise to be conducive to such harmony.

This much the Mail and Express quoted from the Cardinal, but neglected to inform its readers that he also said:—

Whatever may be the abuse arising from Sunday baseball, I regard the baseball players and observers of the game as far less responsible than those who utter from the pulpit on the Lord's day unjust and uncharitable statements about their neighbor. The Christian Sunday is not to be confounded with the Jewish or even the Puritan Sabbath.

This is a cut direct at the pet theories of the Mail and Express and the American Sabbath Union. Their design is to enforce Sunday-keeping on the basis of the fourth commandment. This idea the Cardinal repudiates, maintaining as all Catholics do that Sunday is an institution of the Church. “The Church,” he says, “desires us on that day to be cheerful without dissipation, grave and religious without sadness and melancholy. She forbids, indeed, all unnecessary servile work on that day, but as the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, she allows such work whenever charity or necessity may demand it. As it is a day consecrated not only to religion but to relaxation of mind and body, she permits us to spend a portion of it in innocent recreation.” The Mail and Express is less tolerant than the Cardinal, and the church which he represents, and would invoke the strong arm of the civil law to restrain the people from even those amusements that the Roman Catholic Church, which, according to her own representation, is the mother of the Sunday institution, freely permits.

The Mail and Express, and the association of which its proprietor is president, are largely, if not wholly, responsible for the continued Sunday closing of the Metropolitan Art Gallery, and the Museum of Natural History, in this city, by which thousands of poor people are deprived of the privilege of ever looking upon the beautiful and instructive things which they contain, and which are supposed to be for the benefit of the public, not simply for the gratification of those who are able to take a day off occasionally to look at them. The Cardinal, the Mail and Express, and the American Sabbath Union are, however, all agreed that if it is competent for the State to require Sunday observance, and this is, after all, the all-important point; those who agree on this are not likely to disagree very widely in regard to detail.

C. P. B.