Understanding of the Catholic version of the ten commandments

The Ten Commandments are the synthesis of the moral law given by God himself to Moses on Mount Sinai. Fifty days after the Israelites left their slavery in Egypt and began their exodus to the Promised Land, God called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai, where the Israelites were camped. There, in the middle of a cloud from which thunder and lightning came out, which the Israelites at the base of the mountain could see, God instructed Moses on the moral law and revealed the Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue.

While the text of the Ten Commandments is part of the Judeo-Christian revelation, the moral lessons contained in the Ten Commandments are universal and can be identified by reason. For this reason, the Ten Commandments have been recognized by non-Jewish and non-Christian cultures as representatives of the basic principles of moral life, such as the recognition that things like murder, theft and adultery are wrong and that respect for parents and others in authority are needed. When a person violates the Ten Commandments, society as a whole suffers.

There are two versions of the Ten Commandments. While both follow the text found in Exodus 20: 1-17, they divide the text differently for numbering purposes. The following version is the one used by Catholics, Orthodox and Lutherans; the other version is used by Christians in the Calvinist and Anabaptist denominations. In the non-Catholic version, the text of the First Commandment shown here is divided into two; the first two sentences are called First Commandment and the second two sentences are called Second Commandment. The rest of the commandments are renumbered accordingly, and the Ninth and Tenth Commandments reported here are combined to form the Tenth Commandment of the non-Catholic version.

01

The first commandment
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You won't have strange gods in front of me. You will not do to yourself a sculpted thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or in the earth below, nor those things that are in the waters beneath the earth. You will not adore them or serve them.
The First Commandment reminds us that there is only one God and that worship and honor belong to Him alone. "Strange gods" refers, first of all, to idols, who are false gods; for example, the Israelites created an idol of a golden calf (a "carved thing"), which they worshiped as a god waiting for Moses to return from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments.

But "strange gods" also has a broader meaning. We worship strange gods when we put anything in our lives before God, whether it's a person, or money, or entertainment, or personal honor and glory. All good things come from God; if we come to love or desire those things in themselves, however, and not because they are gifts from God that can help us lead us to God, we put them above God.

02
The second commandment
Do not pronounce the name of the Lord your God in vain.
There are two main ways in which we can vainly take the name of the Lord: first, using it in a curse or irreverently, as in a joke; and secondly, using it in an oath or promise that we do not intend to keep. Either way, we don't show God the reverence and honor he deserves.

03
The third commandment
Remember that you keep holy on the Sabbath day.
In ancient law, the Sabbath day was the seventh day of the week, the day on which God rested after creating the world and all that was in it. For Christians under the new law, Sunday - the day Jesus Christ rose from the dead and the Holy Spirit descended on the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Apostles on Pentecost - is the new day of rest.

We keep Holy Sunday by putting it aside to worship God and avoiding any useless work. We do the same in the Holy Days of Obligation, which have the same status in the Catholic Church on Sundays.

04
The fourth commandment
Honor your father and mother.
We honor our father and mother by treating them with the respect and love that are due to them. We should obey them in all things, as long as what they tell us to do is moral. We have a duty to take care of them in their later years, as they took care of us when we were younger.

The Fourth Commandment extends beyond our parents to all those who hold legitimate authority over us, for example teachers, pastors, government officials and employers. Although we may not love them in the same way we love our parents, we are still required to honor and respect them.

05
The fifth commandment
Do not kill.
The fifth commandment prohibits any illegal killing of human beings. The killing is lawful in certain circumstances, such as self-defense, the pursuit of a just war and the application of the death penalty by the legal authority in response to a very serious crime. Murder - the taking of innocent human life - is never lawful, nor is suicide, the taking of one's life.

Like the fourth commandment, the scope of the fifth commandment is wider than it might seem at the beginning. It is forbidden to cause deliberate harm to others, either in a body or a soul, even if such harm does not cause physical death or the destruction of the soul's life leading to mortal sin. Welcoming anger or hatred against others is also a violation of the Fifth Commandment.

06
The sixth commandment
Do not commit adultery.
As in the fourth and fifth commandments, the sixth commandment extends beyond the rigorous meaning of the word adultery. While this commandment prohibits sexual intercourse with another's wife or husband (or with another woman or man, if you are married), it also requires us to avoid all impurities and immodesty, both physical and spiritual.

Or, to look at it from the opposite direction, this commandment requires that we are chaste, that is, to curb all sexual or immodest desires that fall outside of their rightful place within marriage. This includes reading or watching immodest material, such as pornography, or engaging in solitary sexual activities such as masturbation.

07
The seventh commandment
Do not steal.
Theft takes many forms, including many things that we don't normally think of as stealing. The Seventh Commandment, in a broad sense, requires us to act justly towards others. And justice means giving each person what is due to him.

So, for example, if we borrow something, we have to pay it back and if we hire someone to do a job and it does, we have to pay them what we told them we would do. If someone offers to sell us a valuable item at a very low price, we must make sure that they know that the item is valuable; and if it does, we need to consider whether the item might not be his to sell. Even seemingly innocuous actions like cheating at games are a form of theft because we take something - victory, no matter how silly or insignificant it may seem - from someone else.

08
The eighth commandment
You will not bear false witness against your neighbor.
The eighth commandment follows the seventh not only in number but logically. "Bearing false testimony" means lying and when we lie about someone, we damage his honor and reputation. It is, in a sense, a form of theft that takes something from the person we are lying about: his good name. This lie is known as slander.

But the implications of the eighth commandment go even further. When we think badly of someone without having some reason to do it, we engage in rash judgment. We are not giving that person what is due, that is, the benefit of the doubt. When we engage in gossip or backbiting, we do not give the person we are talking about a chance to defend themselves. Even if what we say about her is true, we could engage in deduction, that is, tell someone else's sins to someone who has no right to know those sins.

09
The ninth commandment
Don't want your neighbor's wife
An explanation of the ninth commandment
Former President Jimmy Carter once famously said that he "craved in his heart," recalling the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:28: "all those who look at a lusty woman have already committed adultery with her in his heart." Desiring another person's husband or wife means having unclean thoughts about that man or woman. Even if one does not act on such thoughts but regards them simply for one's own private pleasure, this is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. If such thoughts come involuntarily to you and you try to get them out of your head, however, this is not a sin.

The Ninth Commandment can be seen as an extension of the Sixth. Where the emphasis in the Sixth Commandment is on physical activity, the emphasis in the Ninth Commandment is on spiritual desire.

10
The tenth commandment
Do not desire the goods of your neighbor.
Just as the ninth commandment expands on the sixth, the tenth commandment is an extension of the prohibition of theft of the seventh commandment. To desire someone else's property is to want to take that property without just cause. This can also take the form of envy, to convince you that another person does not deserve what he has, especially if you don't have the desired object in question.

More generally, the Tenth Commandment means that we should be happy with what we have and happy for others who have their own possessions.