Pray!

Hi Lutero,you said:I have been raised a “Roman” Catholic. I have memorized the The Commandments and learned to lead the Rosary even before I was 6 years old. I learned Novena when I was in sixth Grade. My mother and I performed the devotion of Mary every Wednesday and also do Station of the Cross on the last Friday of each month. I have 2 uncles who are priests and worked at the Church every free time I have. I also stop by in the Prayer room to pray the Rosary every Friday of the week during High School. But I was born again and became a “born-again” Christian after experiencing the love of Jesus personally when I was in college. But I still have one question that even my priest uncles haven’t given me a convincing answer.

I fell away from the Church to atheism when I was around 13 years old. It took about 15 years for me to be open to hearing the truth from the Catholic Church. Scripture tells us plainly:
1 Corinthians 2:14
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

If you fell away from the Catholic Church as a result of being “born again”, you weren’t born again in the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God does not lead anyone away from the Church of Jesus Christ (1 Tim 3:15; Eph 3:10).

When you are ready to listen to the truth, the Catholic answers will make sense to you.

Question: Why does the second commandment “thou shall not make any graven images..” in the Bible is omitted in the Catholic teaching

Answer: It isn’t. It is right there. Perhaps you missed it:
CCC article 1:
ARTICLE 1
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.

and then divide the 10th into two parts.

You are confused because Protestants took the Jewish division rather than the Christian division. You would think that the Jews had divided the Commandments into 10 statements before the Christians. But, you would be wrong. The first person to enumerate the Commandments was St. Augustine in the 3rd Century. That is the division we have today in the Christian Church.

The Jews, in rebellion to Christ, made a different enumeration. The Protestants, in rebellion of God’s Church, took the Jewish division as their own.

The Catholic Church has the first and most logical enumeration of the Ten Commandments.

Most answers I get is that this is not the second, this is part of the 1st.

That is true.

But its very clear the first and this 2nd have a different subject.

You want the second to be about condemning all graven images for any reason because you follow the errors of the Protestants. However, St. Augustine knew that God had commanded the Jews to make graven images of Cherubim (Exodus 25:18) and a bronze serpent (Numbers 21:9). And therefore, that enumeration which you prefer forces the Word of God to contradict itself.

When Catholic says its the same (even if its not), how were the able divide 9th and 10th and say its different when both contain the key phrase “Thou shall not covet…”? which means the same. I checked this with my parents Catholic Bibles (1 is very old twice the size of an Encyclopedia and has sketches/drawings on it) and the 10 commandments are properly indented and the 2nd is “Thou shall not make any graven images…” and the “Thou shall not covet….” is only one indent. This is also the same in my Christian Bible (w/o Deuterocanonicals). So why is this?

If you read the 9 and 10th Commandments, you will find that there are several things which one should not covet. The Protestant division equates a wife and a man’s house and other possessions. As though women were objects.

The Catholic division takes into account that wives “are one flesh” with their husbands (Genesis 2:24). Therefore, coveting a wife is on a different order than coveting a non-human object. Therefore, the Augustinian enumeration of the Commandments is far superior to the Jewish and Protestant version.

Sincerely,

De Maria