Did Pope John Paul II really say in an encyclical that Sunday-breakers, or Sabbath-keepers, should be punished or persecuted as heretics? If you have heard this, don't get excited and don't believe it either.
This story has its origin in a Detroit newspaper article published just
prior to the release of Dies Domini by Pope John Paul II, regarding
Sunday worship. The article in question is titled 
Pope's call for
worship welcomed, by Mark Puls and Charles Hurt, and was
published on July 7th, 1998 by the Detroit News, the copyright
holder. It the article, Jay McNally, the executive director of the Metro
Detroit Catholic lay group Call to Holiness, was quoted as follows
with regard to the then impending papal letter Dies Domini:
In his letter, the pope goes on to say a violator [of Sunday sacredness] should be "punished as a heretic," said McNally, who read an unofficial English translation of the letter on a Vatican Web site.
So the Detroit News is quoting Mr. McNally, who is claiming to cite the encyclical Dies Domini as he allegedly found it posted on the Vatican's own web site. Unfortunately, the Detroit News reporters apparently did not attempt to confirm this on the Vatican site for themselves, they simply took the word of Mr. McNally. This was the mistake that gave life to this erroneous story.
Here is where you can read Dies
Domini yourself, on the Vatican's site. Now, as you will see,
nowhere in this document does Pope John Paul II advocate punishing or
persecuting either Sunday-breakers or Sabbath-keepers as heretics, but despite
this, the Detroit News unwittingly published an erroneous story that seems to
still have a life of its own, in spite of the facts being so easily checked.
Mr. McNally actually confused two totally different papal documents, the
encyclical Dies Domini, regarding Sunday worship, and the Motu
Proprio Ad
Tuendam Fidem, which was made public a few days earlier, which
deals with changing Catholic canon law, specifically, canon 1436, which reads:
Canon 1436:
§ 1. Whoever denies a truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or who calls into doubt, or who totally repudiates the Christian faith, and does not retract after having been legitimately warned, is to be punished as a heretic or an apostate with a major excommunication; a cleric moreover can be punished with other penalties, not excluding deposition.
§ 2. In addition to these cases, whoever obstinately rejects a teaching that the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops, exercising the authentic Magisterium, have set forth to be held definitively, or who affirms what they have condemned as erroneous, and does not retract after having been legitimately warned, is to be punished with an appropriate penalty.
The revision of Canon 1436, however, is not directly addressing the issue of Sunday or Sabbath worship, but heretical beliefs and teaching in general by Catholics who refuse to toe the official doctrinal line.
So just to set the record straight, Pope John Paul II never called for the persecution of Sunday-breakers or Sabbath-keepers in his encyclical Dies Domini, or anywhere else for that matter.
