The Fourth Commandment

Fourth Commandment: Honor thy father and mother.

• Includes the duties of children to love and obey their parents and authority figures, and the duties of authority figures to properly lead and care for others

• The family finds its identity in God in the love held between the Blessed Trinity

  • The family also finds its mission, abilities, and obligations in God

  • The Christian family is a domestic church

• Family: A man and a woman who are united in marriage, together with their children. This institution is prior to any recognition by public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it

  • What a family is cannot change - the human family is natural and directed by and towards God

  • The family is the original cell of social life

    • Love and stability in families translates to freedom, fraternity, and security in society

    • Virtues and morals are taught first in the home

    • The value of others in the home supports democracy

      • The decline in the permanence of family life is intrinsically bound up with the decline in democracy

• The family is a community of love

  • We carry God’s Divine Image, so we are inclined to love others and seek goodness

  • The closer the relationship, the greater the duty to love

  • Spouses should share a close bond that extends to their children

    • Children should honour, obey, respect, and love their parents, whose love, in cooperation with God, resulted in their children

    • This love should extend to all kinsmen

      • It is best to take care of extended family in need within the family home

      • We have a commandment of charity to care for all of our family

    • The family is the first institution and social structure established by God

• Duties of parents to children

  • Fairness and Understanding - children ought to be treated with the respect owed to children of God

  • Discipline - discipline paves the way for virtuous action

  • Instruction in the Faith - parents have a serious obligation to form and educate their children in the Catholic faith

• Duties of children to parents

  • Honor

  • Respect - filial piety derives from gratitude

  • Obedience, as long as their demands obey the moral law

• Civic obligations of citizens

  • Authority has a divine origin, so Christians must obey and respect authority

    • God wills that society is well-governed by a ruler

    • Unjust laws that violate the moral law must not be obeyed

  • Just punishment may be applied when civil law is disregarded

  • Authority may impose taxes if it is in the interest of the common good

• Governmental obligations to citizens

  • The authority must serve the community

  • Authority must guarantee conditions that respect the fundamental rights of humans

  • Subsidiarity: The idea that a higher authority must not interfere with a lower authority without necessity

The Fifth Commandment

Fifth Commandment: You shall not kill

• The human person is made in the image of likeness of God, and thus, has a dignity that transcends the value of material creation

  • Humans are someone, not something

  • Humans are called by grace to be with their loving God

• The life of the human should be sacred because of this dignity

• Human life begins at fertilization (affirmed by 96% of scientists)

  • From the first moment of his existence, a human being is recognized as having the rights of a person

• Society has become a “culture of death”

Sins Against the Fifth Commandment

• Abusive Language, Resentment, Omission of Service, Racism, Revenge, Vindictiveness, Poor Treatment of Oppressors, Unjust Wars, Substance Abuse, Violence, Anger, Hatred

• Abortion: The destruction of a child after conception but before birth

  • At conception, a human being is created. It is wrong to kill an innocent human being

  • Even if we did not know when life begins in the womb, you would not know if you are killing a human or not; therefore, abortion poses the risk of murder

  • At conception, a new human genome, separate from the mother’s womb, is created

  • Abortion has been used to eliminate girls, those with disabilities, and certain races/ethnicities

  • There are some cases in which abortion seems preferable, but it still remains a grave violation of human dignity

    • Rape and incest - the guilty party is the rapist, not the unborn child

    • Life of the mother - there are no medically necessary abortions

      • Tubal Pregnancy: When the baby develops in the fallopian tube, and the principle of double effect can be used to justify a salpingectomy

      • Preterm Deliveries: Babies delivered prior to term due to a serious condition of the mother

      • St. Gianna decided to prioritize the life of her child, rather than herself

    • Prenatal diagnosis of abnormalities - humans should have dignity based on their existence, not their features or abilities

• Euthanasia: The decision by doctors, family members, or public officials to end the life of a person who has a slim chance or recovery or whose quality of life is deemed poor

  • Implemented in Nazi Germany, and comes from euthanatos (sweet death)

• In Vitro Fertilization: The medical technique used to fertilize a human embryo in a test tube or petri dish, and then implant it into a woman’s uterus. Often, many fertilized embryos are created to later be frozen or discarded

• Embryonic Stem-Cell Research: The termination of an embryo to harvest its stem cells for scientific research

• Sterilization: The destruction of fertility and fruitfulness using surgical or chemical procedures, rendering humans incapable of producing offspring

• Human Cloning: The process of developing a human from one somatic cell of its parent to be genetically identical

• Mutilation: The action of disfiguring a part of the body, sometimes rendering it useless or wounded

• Suicide: The act of taking one’s own life; self-murder

  • Assisted Suicide: The suffering person requests help from others to end their own life (self administered)

• Cult of the Body: Extreme and obsessive efforts to alter one’s body in a way that does not honour human dignity, such as excessive tattooing, piercing, bodybuilding, and cosmetic surgeries

• Gluttony: Eating to an excess beyond the purpose of proper nourishment

• Murder: The sinful killing of a human being with malice aforethought

• Capital Punishment: An act by the legitimate authority of a state or nation to put a criminal to death

The Sixth and Ninth Commandments

Sixth Commandment: You shall not commit adultery

Ninth Commandment: You shall not covet you neighbour’s wife

• Marriage was created by God because He is a mystery of personal loving communion, and He inscribed in humans the vocation of love and communion

• What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder

  • Christ elevates marital love to its intended status

• Truths of Marriage found in Genesis

  • God created man and woman in His image and likeness

  • Spouses are companions equal in dignity and in a permanent and exclusive union of love

    • To be equal does not mean the same - there is a profound difference and complementarity between men and women

  • Spouses are destined to form a new social unit

  • Marriage is a unity so intimate that they become “one flesh”

  • Marriage has a unitive and procreative purpose blessed by God

  • Spouses willingly and intelligently cooperate in God’s creative act

• Marriage is indissoluble and exclusive in its total self-giving and permanent stability - a total self-gift cannot be taken back

  • Free - without coercion, wholeheartedly

  • Total - all the days of life on earth

  • Faithful - love and honour each other

  • Fruitful - be prepared to accept children

• Marriage is in many aspects of the Catholic Faith

  • Adam and Eve, God and Israel, Christ and the Church in Revelation, The Song of Solomon, the Holy Family

  • Christ gave Himself totally to us, just as spouses do in marriage

• Theology of the Body

  • God made this world on purpose and out of love

  • God created human beings in His image and likeness

  • Human beings are body-soul composites

  • You are your body

  • What you do with your body matters

  • God is love

  • The deepest identity of a human being is that they are made for love

  • Jesus came to repair that brokenness that happened in the fall; “this is my body for you”

• Lying with our bodies

  • Our body has a language, and can tell truths or lies

  • When we use another person, we tell a lie with our body

    • People are not objects for use - treating them as such would violate their truth

    • Committing adultery is a lie against marriage

• Chastity: A virtue of temperance which allows us to see the whole person. It cultivates a right understanding of human sexuality.

  • Human sexuality is not merely instinct, but also subject to intellect and will

  • A truthful exercise of sexuality should involve a loving self-giving between spouses in total dedication

  • Sex is a unitive and procreative act

    • Unitive - joining together spouses in fidelity and unity

    • Procreative - an openness to the possibility of new life in cooperation with God’s creative act

• Telos: The end, aim, or goal

Sins Against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments

• Adultery: Sexual relations with someone other than one’s spouse

  • This is a grave injustice against one’s spouse and children

• Polygamy: Having more than one spouse

  • Negates the exclusivity of marriage

• Incest: Intimate relations between relatives

• Divorce - Civil dissolution of marriage; an attempt to break the lifelong commitment of fidelity and spousal love required by marriage

  • Breaks the freely made contract between spouses to stay together until death

• Cohabitation - A man and a woman living together unmarried and having sexual relations

  • “Playing house” when the intimacy of romantic relations should be reserved for spouses

• Contraception: The deliberate intervention by use of mechanical, chemical, or other medical procedures, with the intention to prevent new life that may form through sexual intercourse

  • Birth control has roots in eugenics, which aimed to build the “perfect race” of humans

  • Natural Family Planning: The use of a woman’s naturally infertile periods to space children according to a couple’s careful discernment

    • This is licit, as it does not prevent the conception of children and maintains the dignity of marital love

• Direct Sterilization: Permanent form of contraception which involves surgical procedures performed on the man or woman, rendering future conception biologically impossible

• Pornography: Exposing the human body and removing the sexual act from the intimacy of spouses, usually in video or images, for the purpose of lustful gratification

  • Objectifies humans and diminishes the dignity of both parties

  • It reduces the victim to a means of sexual gratification, and it hinders the reason and will of the viewer

  • Specifically a sin against chastity

• These sins arise due to the four prophecies from the Humanae Vitae

  • Infidelity and moral decline - the desire for pleasure without the responsibility of marriage or family

  • Loss of respect for women - objectification

  • Abuse of power by the state

  • Unlimited dominion over the body - changing our nature in a way that violates our dignity and the moral law

The Seventh and Tenth Commandments

Seventh Commandment: You shall not steal

Tenth Commandment: You shall not covet your neighbour’s goods

• Groups of people, as nations, communities, and organizations, are obliged to obey the moral law

• Catholic social teaching is a set of principles that can be used to analyze any issue

  • Life and dignity of the human person

  • Call to family, community, and participation (subsidiarity)

  • Protection of human rights and responsibilities

  • Preferential option for the poor and vulnerable

  • The dignity of work and the right of workers

  • Solidarity and work towards the common good

  • Care for God’s creation - stewardship

• Justice: To take up our responsibilities, and to give others their due

• Right to Own Property: The ownership of private goods will not conflict with the common good as long as there is a fair distribution of goods in creation

  • The Universal Destination of Goods: All humans have the right to access what they need to live a dignified life, as God entrusted the goods of creation to all mankind

    • It is a duty to give to the poor once our own needs are met

  • Eminent Domain: The government can claim private property, with an appropriate payment to the owner, because of a legitimate or overriding public concern

• No one should suffer in squalor while others are able to live comfortably

  • A globalized economy allows wealthy nations to help or exploit poorer nations

Sins Against the Seventh and Tenth Commandments

• Theft: Unjustly taking another person’s possessions against his reasonable will

  • There is not theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods

  • Includes vandalism, excessive expenses, wasting time at work, tax evasion, and cheating on exams

• Greed: The desire for earthly goods that are not truly needed for a Christian life

• Avarice: The inordinate desire of acquiring and hoarding wealth

  • Causes hard-heartedness and injustice

• Envy: Wrongful desire for things possessed by another or unhappiness at another’s good fortune

• Restitution: Repairing damage unjustly done or repaying the owner a fair price for his stolen or damaged goods

  • A remedy for an offence against the Seventh Commandment

The Eighth Commandment

Eighth Commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour

• Lying is the most direct offense against the truth

  • Lying: To speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error

  • Mischievous Lie: A lie with the intent to injure another

  • Jocose Lie: A lie directed towards the good of pleasure

  • Officious Lie: A lie directed towards the good of helping or protecting another person

• A lie may become mortal if it directly causes grave injury to justice and charity

• Truth in speech expresses what the individual perceives to be corresponding to reality

• To deliberately articulate a falsehood contradicts human dignity

  • Lies detract from sincerity, credibility, and breed mistrust in relationships

  • The gravity of a lie is measured against the nature of the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims

• Every Christian has a vocation to witness and communicate the truth

  • All Christians must be ready to be a consistent witness to Christ, even at the cost of suffering

  • One can love the difficulties of this world for the sake of eternal rewards

Sins Against the Eighth Commandment

• Calumny (Slander): A lie that falsely accuses another of wrongdoing or a vice; by virtue of their dignity, every person has the right to a good name

• Detraction: Hurting someone’s good name through the disclosure of an incriminating truth when not necessary for the common good

• Rash Judgement: A judgement that questions someone’s character or concludes a moral defect without sufficient evidence

• Insincere Flattery: Attributes qualities that may not exist or which are exaggerated, usually for personal gain or favour

• Bragging