Eternal Life Blog

The Catholic Ten Commandments, as taught to me and other Catholic children in the 1960s from the Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism, were critically different from the real Ten Commandments from God (Ex. 20:1-17)! What a shock it was for me, years later, to learn this. At the time I was a Roman Catholic, who intended to stay a Roman Catholic, but started to read the Bible! Reading the Bible for myself was the single most important thing I did to learn the vital truths I needed to know about how to get true forgiveness of sins.

Catholics Prostrate or Bow Before Graven Images

Why were the Catholic ten commandments altered? The answer is easy when one knows about the Catholic practice of bowing before statues (graven images) and the anathema condemnation it carries from Catholicism for all Christians who oppose it:

Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints are to be placed and retained especially in the churches, and that due honor and veneration is to be given them … but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which they represent, so that by means of the images which we kiss and before which we uncover the head and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ and venerate the saints whose likeness they bear …. great profit is derived from all holy images, not only because the people are thereby reminded of the benefits and gifts bestowed on them by Christ, but also because through the saints the miracles of God and salutary examples are set before the eyes of the faithful, so that they may give God thanks for those things, may fashion their own and conduct in imitation of the saints and be moved to adore and love God and cultivate piety. But if anyone should teach or maintain anything contrary to these decrees, let him be anathema. (H. J. Schroeder, O. P., The Canons And Decrees Of The Council Of Trent, Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1978, p. 216, emphasis mine)

Hence, the altered Catholic Ten Commandments taught to us children omitted the forbidden making of graven images and bowing before them frequently done in the Catholic church. God’s truth was hidden from us:

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, (Exo 20:4,5)

The Altered Catholic Ten Commandments Made Two Commands From One

Because the real second commandment was omitted, the Catholic church then needed to replace it with another to make ten commandments again. That is why they made two commandments out of the real tenth commandment about coveting from Ex. 20:17:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Exo 20:17)

The altered Catholic commandments for numbers 9 and 10 come from the tenth commandment:

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.

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