Why have Catholics removed the second commandment?

[derDenker1992]

I was wondering how can Catholics justify altering God's word and removing the second commandment?

 

[JacktheCatholic]

I was wondering how can Catholics justify altering God's word and removing the second commandment?

Catholics retain all ten Commandments. Why would you believe otherwise???

 

[Dark_Lite]

I was wondering how can Catholics justify altering God's word and removing the second commandment?

If I had a nickel for the number of times I've heard this one...

Then there's the people, who after being presented with the proper explanation, still decide that it's true (when it's not). Makes me want to smash my head into the wall.

There are several different ways of numbering the Ten Commandments, because there are more than ten actual imperative statements. The Catholic Church and Lutherans use the numbering devised by Augustine. It rolls the "second commandment" that you are familiar with into the first one. The Orthodox and Reformed churches use a numbering which separates the "You shall have no other gods before me" and "you shall not worship idols" into two different commandments.

Here is a table highlighting the different numberings between different denominations and Judaism: Ten Commandments - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Dylan Michael]

The Catholic and Lutheran First commandment, condensed:

I am the LORD your God, you shall have no other Gods before me

.

The Catholic/Lutheran first commandment in full:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
Do not have any other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
but showing steadfast love to the

thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

We believe the Idolatry clause is contained in the first commandment, as idols are false gods.

Tell me, why have Christians removed the First commandment?
Do you know the Jewish first commandment?

It is:

I am the Lord your God

That's it. The second commandment for Jews is
Do not have false gods and Don't take the LORD's name in vain.

So, nobody's deleted anything, it's just the way we number them.

 

[Eucharisted]

OP,

You would do better to ask why many Catholics are hypocritical and proud. For we are a wayward people, and all have fallen short of God's grace, yet we must strive to be like Jesus, our Lord and Savior. And even if you believe we are as devils, sons of the Antichrist, look upon our love of Jesus and see that all love is from God: Why would the Antichrist bow low to Christ? Why would his children adore God? Would not he say, "I am Christ!" and his children, "We are gods!"? Yet there is a great difference between Christian life and a false imitation of it, as even the Church Fathers note when they rebuked heretics and pagans that imitated Christians under the guise of love and adoration of God, and the same goes for those Christians who are not really Christians but servants of the flesh, doing its works of rioting, dissension, quarreling, heresies, etc. A servant cannot have two masters, and we all have one Master in Heaven. Therefore rebuke our sins, and call us to correction, but do it as kindly as the angel Michael rebuked Satan over the body of Moses and as Christ saved the adulteress from being stoned, for kindness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit and it makes us perfect like the Lord, so that no longer the man lives but Christ in him, wherefore others see in the man Christ, and being drawn to Him, listen to him and return to good living. Assuredly God is angered by sin and saddened by a soul weakened, or even killed, in sin. Imitate Him.

 

[QuantaCura]

They are numbered differently. The prohibition against idol worship is numbered as part of the 1st Commandment requiring we worship God. This seems logical since the prhibition agains idol worship simply provides more detail concerning the exclusive adoration we are to give God.

Then, the commandment against coveting is split into two: no coveting someone's goods and no coveting someone's wife. This seems logical to me since a man's wife is not on the same level as his stuff.

Here's my question: why doesn't the OP have 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Wisdom, and Sirach in his Bible? Who gave his ecclesial community the authority to dump those books venerated as Scripture since the canon of Scripture was originally determined by the Christians of old?

 

[MoonlessNight]

The ten commandments aren't presented as a bullet list of ten things anywhere in the Bible. Thus, you have to interpret where the breaks are. The Catholic way of doing it is as follows:

First Commandment - I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 7'You shall have no other gods before Me.
8'You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
9'You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,
10but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.



Second Commandment - You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.



Third Commandment - Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.
13'Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
14but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
15'You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.


Fourth Commandment - Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the LORD your God gives you.



Fifth Commandment - You shall not murder.



Sixth Commandment - You shall not commit adultery.



Seventh Commandment - You shall not steal.


Eighth Commandment - You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.


Ninth Commandment - You shall not covet your neighbor's wife

Tenth Commandment - You shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

That's taken from Deuteronomy 5. You could argue that these are not sensible divisions, since the lengths of the commandments are over the place. But that's the case in the protestant division as well. Realistically you could divide the first commandment into at least three commandments (the LORD is your God, make no idols, do not serve or worship other gods) and you could easily combine the prohibitions against murder adultery and theft into a single commandment. There's no one obvious right way to do it from the text, so we use the traditional numbering.

 

[Davidnic]

Like everyone has said, it is a numbering thing. We group not worshiping idols into the first commandment. If you think we got rid of something so we could have statues then look at the Catechism where it addresses idols, it mentions them as against the first commandment:

2112 The first commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of "idols, [of] silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see." These empty idols make their worshippers empty: "Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them." God, however, is the "living God" who gives life and intervenes in history.

2113 Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and mammon." Many martyrs died for not adoring "the Beast" refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.
​

So we teach the prohibition of making idols (physical and otherwise) as against the first commandment.

As to why statues are not idols, we don't worship them. They are like pictures of loved ones or Holy reminders of the life of a person. They are venerated and respected for the living person they remind us of...but they are not adored and worshiped as God is. We make a clear distinction on that.

 

[Eucharisted]

Verse numbers, commandment numbers, capitalization, etc. are all modern, in a sense. Early Christians didn't worry over what verses exactly said, nor how commandments were numbered exactly, nor the capitalization of pronouns and names. But antiquity isn't always good; God leads us into all truths. Worrying over a trifle is a trifle.

Edit: I should add that early Christians did understand the Commandments to be ten, yet they did not all number them as we do today. Some put the Second in with the First, for example.

 

[Antigone]

I was wondering how can Catholics justify altering God's word and removing the second commandment?

We were trying to martyr ourself because we knew we'd have to answer this question ad nauseam.

 

[benedictaoo]

I was wondering how can Catholics justify altering God's word and removing the second commandment?

The same justification Martin Luther used when he did it.

 

[epiclesis]

 

[Antigone]

YouTube - Troll in the Dungeon!

 

[ChristoEtEcclesiae]

I'm waiting for a Protestant to literally cut the second commandment out of a Catholic edition of the Bible and offer it as evidence that Catholics ignore it.

 

[derDenker1992]

Thank you. In now way was I trying to attack the Catholic tradition. I am merely trying to get answers to questions that I truly did not understand and I though who better to ask then the Catholics. Thank you for all of your answers. I'm sure that I'll have more in the future, and God bless.

 

[Dark_Lite]

Thank you. In now way was I trying to attack the Catholic tradition. I am merely trying to get answers to questions that I truly did not understand and I though who better to ask then the Catholics. Thank you for all of your answers. I'm sure that I'll have more in the future, and God bless.

Believe it or not, there are some people whom, even after receiving this explanation, choose to ignore the answer and continue believing that Catholics somehow removed the second commandment. It's an amazing exercise in cognitive dissonance.

You did the right thing by asking Catholics what Catholics believe. There is so much misinformation floating around about Catholicism, it's not even funny. It's a good practice to always ask a group what they believe, rather than finding out about the information from secondary sources.

 

[ChristoEtEcclesiae]

Believe it or not, there are some people whom, even after receiving this explanation, choose to ignore the answer and continue believing that Catholics somehow removed the second commandment. It's an amazing exercise in cognitive dissonance.

You did the right thing by asking Catholics what Catholics believe. There is so much misinformation floating around about Catholicism, it's not even funny. It's a good practice to always ask a group what they believe, rather than finding out about the information from secondary sources.

Especially if that secondary source happens to be Jack "I don't need to properly cite my sources" Chick.

 

[derDenker1992]

Believe it or not, there are some people whom, even after receiving this explanation, choose to ignore the answer and continue believing that Catholics somehow removed the second commandment. It's an amazing exercise in cognitive dissonance.

You did the right thing by asking Catholics what Catholics believe. There is so much misinformation floating around about Catholicism, it's not even funny. It's a good practice to always ask a group what they believe, rather than finding out about the information from secondary sources.

I understnad where the catholic church is coming from in that sense although I still have a lot of questions. I've been trying to ask my roomate, who is Catholic, but everytime I ask him a theological question he changes the subject. I believe he doesn't know very much about it then. So I figured I should ask where people seem to know what they are talking about. What I still don't understand is why Catholics use mediators to reach God other than Jesus.

 

[Protoevangel]

I understnad where the catholic church is coming from in that sense although I still have a lot of questions. I've been trying to ask my roomate, who is Catholic, but everytime I ask him a theological question he changes the subject. I believe he doesn't know very much about it then. So I figured I should ask where people seem to know what they are talking about. What I still don't understand is why Catholics use mediators to reach God other than Jesus.

There is only one mediator between God and man, but there are many intercessors. Paul exhorts each of us to intercede for each other.

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,
- 1 Timothy 2:5

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
- 2 Timothy 1-2

 

[derDenker1992]

There is only one mediator between God and man, but there are many intercessors. Paul exhorts each of us to intercede for each other.

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,
- 1 Timothy 2:5

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
- 2 Timothy 1-2

I still don't understand where it says to pray to saints or where it says that in the Bible. I apologize if this seems trivial to you, but I've never studied thoroughly into Catholic beliefs.