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The Ten Commandments
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On this page, you'll find our summer bulletin highlights on the Ten Commandments—the Decalogue (“ten words” of God). The Ten Commandments state what is required in the love of God and neighbor and are obligatory for Christians. The first three concern our love of God and the other seven love of neighbor.
Each commandment directs us to positive action as well as prohibiting certain actions. This review may help us to see the Commandments in a new way and can be an aid in examining our conscience in preparation for sacramental confession.
The 1st Commandment:
I am the Lord, thy God,
The Catechism of the Catholic Church connects the first commandment to the virtues of faith, hope and love.
thou shalt not have strange gods before me.Obligations enjoined by the First Commandment:
- Make efforts to find out what God has revealed, i.e., study the faith
- Believe firmly what God has revealed
- Profess our faith openly
- Honor Mary and the Saints but give God the honor and glory
Sins against the First Commandment:
- Apostasy: leaving the faith of Christ
- Heresy: the deliberate, obstinate, denial of one or more truths of the faith
- Indifferentism: the belief that one religion is as good as another
- Presumption: the belief that one can be saved by one’s own efforts without the grace of God, or by God’s grace without one’s own efforts
- Despair: a refusal to trust that God will provide the grace we need in life
- Envy: resenting another’s success
- Sloth: spiritual laziness
- Scandal: bad example that could lead others to sin
- Superstition (belief in dreams, fortune telling, going to spiritists)
- Sacrilege: mistreating sacred persons, places or things
The 2nd Commandment:
The Lord said: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
The second commandment prescribes respect for the Lord’s name. It governs our use of speech in sacred matters.Obligations enjoined by the Second Commandment:
- To speak with reverence of God, of the saints and of holy things.
- To be truthful in taking oaths and being faithful to them
- To be faithful to our vows
Sins against the Second Commandment:
- Invoking the name of the Lord with disrespect
- Blasphemy: insulting language which expresses contempt for God and the saints
- Perjury: Calling on God to bear witness to a lie
- Cursing: Calling down some evil on a person, place or thing.
The 3rd Commandment:
Remember to Keep Holy the Lord's Day
The third commandment recalls the holiness of the Sabbath. It is set apart for the praise of God. It brings everyday work to a halt and provides a respite. It is a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money.Obligations enjoined by this commandment:
- To worship God on Sunday by assisting at Mass
- Take time to rest and spend more time in spiritual reading and prayer
Sins against this commandment:
- Engaging in work or activities that hinder the worship due to God and the joy proper to the Lord’s Day
[Legitimate excuses from Sunday obligation would be: illness, job obligations and family obligations, i.e., a caregiver for an ill member of the family.]
The 4th Commandment:
Honor Your Father and Your Mother
The fourth commandment opens the second table of the Decalogue. It shows us the order of charity by which we are to honor and respect all those whom God, for our good, has vested with his authority.Obligations enjoined by this commandment:
- To love and respect our parents and to obey them in all that is not sinful, and to give them material and moral support in old age, in times of illness, and distress.
- To respect and obey our lawful superiors.
- Parents are to provide for the spiritual and bodily welfare of their children.
- Superiors, according to their varying degrees of authority must care for those entrusted to them.
- Take an active part in the works of good citizenship and show a sincere interest in the welfare of the country by obedience to lawful authority, voting honestly, paying just taxes, and defending the country’s rights when necessary.
- Public officials are to be just in exercising authority and promote the general welfare.
Sins against this commandment:
- Disrespect, unkindness, and disobedience to parents and lawful superiors.
The 5th Commandment:
You Shall Not Kill
Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. No one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human life.Obligations enjoined by this commandment:
- To take proper care of our bodily and spiritual well-being and that of others
- Not injuring our neighbor in any way
- Taking medicine when necessary
- Acts of self-defense when necessary
- The defense, care, and healing of human embryos
- Treating the bodies of the dead with respect and charity
- Safeguarding the peace / avoidance of war
Sins against this commandment:
- Intentional homicide (murder, abortion)
- Doing anything that with the intention of indirectly causing the death of a person
- Refusing assistance to a person in danger
- Formal cooperation in an abortion
- Exploiting human embryos for disposable biological material
- Euthanasia
- Suicide (grave psychological disturbances, anguish, can diminish the responsibility of one committing suicide)
- Causing scandal / Bad example
- Kidnapping /hostage taking
- Fighting, anger, hatred, revenge
- Drunkenness
- Reckless driving
The 6th Commandment
You Shall Not Commit Adultery
Creating the human race in his own image, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation and thus the capacity and responsibility of love and communion. Sexuality concerns the capacity to love and to procreate and the aptitude of forming bonds of communion with others.Obligations enjoined by this commandment:
- To be pure and modest in our behavior
- Chastity—self-mastery that seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason
Sins against this commandment:
- Lust
- Masturbation
- Fornication [sexual relations of the unmarried]
- Pornography
- Prostitution
- Rape / Incest
- Adultery [marital infidelity]
- Divorce (Note that an innocent victim of divorce, an abandoned spouse, does not contravene the moral law.)
- Cohabitation / “trial marriage”
You Shall Not Steal
In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits. The appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping them to meet his or her basic needs and the needs of those in their charge.Obligations enjoined by this commandment:
- Respect things that belong to others
- Living up to our business agreements
- Paying our just debts
- Paying a just wage to employees
- Restoring to the owner, any stolen goods or their value
- Repairing damage unjustly done to the property of others
- Religious respect for the integrity of creation/kindness to animals
- Giving alms to the poor
Sins against this commandment:
- Stealing
- Cheating
- Discrimination
- Refusing or withholding a just wage
The 8th Commandment
You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor
God is the sourc e of all truth. Since God is “true” the members of his people are called to live in the truth. They are obliged to honor and bear witness to it. They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they know it and direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth.Obligations enjoined by this commandment:
- Speak the truth in all things, especially in what concerns the good name and honor of others
- Transmission of the Father in words and deeds
- Repair the harm done by the sins against the commandment
- Practice moderation, discipline, and charity in social media
- Journalists: Respect the nature of facts and limits of critical judgment
- Civil Authorities: Defend just freedom of information
Sins against this commandment:
- Lies
- Rash judgment [Believing something harmful to another’s character without sufficient reason]
- Detraction [Revealing without good reason the hidden faults of others]
- Calumny/Slander: [Injuring the good name of another by lying]
- Revealing secrets we are bound to keep
- Revealing any sin overheard in the confessional
The 9th Commandment
You Shall Not Covet Your Neighbor's Wife
The heart is the seat of moral personality. The “pure of heart” refers to those who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God’s holiness, chiefly in three areas: charity, chastity, and truth.Obligations enjoined by this commandment:
- Purity in thought and desire
- Disciplining of feelings and imagination that incline us to turn aside from the path of God’s commandments
- Modesty in dress: respecting the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit
- Purifying the social climate / Avoiding entertainment inclined to voyeurism and illusion
Sins against this commandment
- Lust
- Lack of temperance
- Voyeurism
The 10th Commandment
You Shall Not Covet Your Neighbor's Goods
This commandment unfolds and completes the ninth. The sensitive appetite leads us to desire pleasant things we do not have. These desires are good in themselves but often exceed the limits of reason.Obligations enjoined by this commandment:
- Cultivating a detachment from material things/riches
- The proper use of worldly things
- Striving to mortify our cravings in order to prevail over the seductions of pleasure and power
Sins against this commandment:
- Greed
- Avarice (materialism)
- Gluttony
- Envy