Traditional Catholic Teaching - Lesson 17

Lesson 17 - The Commandments

Part Two

Commandments 4 to 10—Our Duty to our Neighbour

Commandments 4 to 10 sum up the rules which deal with our relations with one another.

Loving Our Neighbour – Is It Possible?

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. We are all ready to pay lip service to this principle. We are all ready to point the finger of scorn at a man who does not seem to live up to it. But the fact is that all of us find a certain difficulty in seeing just how it is possible.

There are certain people whom we just do not like. There are others whom we cannot help liking. And there are many others whom we don't know at all and therefore we cannot tell whether we like them or not.

How can I say therefore that I really can love my neighbour as myself? The answer is that we can love a person without necessarily liking him.

An enemy airman who has just been dive-bombing us is shot down and is lying wounded by his parachute. We don't even know him, we can't pretend to like him. But we pick him up, put him on a stretcher and bandage his wounds. That is loving him. It means that in spite of everything we recognise that he is a son of God and in so far as he is a son of God we wish him well and we will do what we can to help him.

In short, loving our neighbour means seeing him for what he is, first and foremost, a son of God. Every man is loved by God. Our Lord died for all men. We have to judge men by God's standards and therefore wish all men well.

Notice that sometimes this may mean that we have to hurt someone. We may be compelled to shoot down the enemy bomber by our love for our neighbour whom he is bombing. Again, we may be bound to punish a criminal to prevent him injuring others and indeed injuring himself by crime.

How far real affection will enter in this love of our neighbour as we have described it above will depend on how far we are approaching holiness. It is possible but it is not easy. We have to pray to God to help us to see our neighbour as he is and to love him for what he is.

The Letter and the Spirit

Commandments 4 to 10 summarise our duty towards our neighbour. Notice that the statements in all the Commandments are only like chapter headings, they state briefly the most serious way in which the law can be broken. But they include also many lesser ways in which the law can be broken.

The fifth Commandment forbids murder, But obviously it also forbids anything that might lead to murder such as hatred and revenge. it is easy sometimes to get into the habit simply of looking at the words of a law and forgetting the spirit that lies behind it.

That had happened among some sections of the Jews in Christ's time. Christ continually drew attention to the fact that one can break a Commandment in the heart even if one never gets as far as doing the action.

You have heard that ii was said to them of old: Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say to you that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matt. 5.)

Fourth Commandment

Honour thy father and thy mother.

Obedience and reverence is due to those who are in authority over us. We are commanded to love, reverence and obey our parents in all that is not sin, This Commandment extends not only to parents but also to all lawful superiors. We are bound to obey the State, for example~ in so far as the laws of the State are not against the law of God.

Obedience is not slavery. Obedience means a respect for authority and all authority in the long run comes from God. Therefore Christ said:

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to
God the things that are God's. (Matt. 22.)

It is true that the individual and the family have certain rights independent of the State. A man has the right to life; a parent has the right to educate his children without asking permission from the State.

It is one of the evils of the present day that States are always trying to claim more than is their due. A proper balance must be held. There may even come a time when a man has a right to rebel. But it may be necessary sometimes to forgo the right of rebellion when this would only bring greater evils than are being endured already.

Both in families and in States and indeed in all communities the happiest and best relations are those founded on love. There is no need for exact definition of rights and duties in a family when parents and children are bound together in love for one another, and those States are the happiest when the rulers and the ruled respect one another and are bound in a common loyalty to their country which we call the virtue of patriotism.

Fifth Commandment

When Our Lord quoted this Commandment (Matt19: 18) He said: Thou shalt do no murder.

This gives a more exact meaning to the words: "Thou shalt not kill".

What is forbidden is the unlawful taking of life. A man has a right to defend himself and to defend others against an unjust aggressor. (Where there is a proportionate cause his action is not murder but self-defence. Obviously there must be some proportion between the cause and the action. A man has a right to defend his life if necessary by shooting. But if his apple tree is being pilfered he has no right to defend that by shooting.)

Again in so far as it is necessary to defend society against criminals the State has a right to impose capital punishment. Notice, however, that the question of whether capital punishment is necessary or not is not decided by the Commandment. That is a question which every State must decide for itself in the light of its own circumstances. (In fact today many States would say it is no longer necessary.)

Wilful murder is the killing of the innocent. It is so grievous a crime that it is called in the Bible a sin crying to heaven for vengeance.¹

¹Three other sins are so described in the Bible. They are the sin of Sodom, Oppression of the poor, and Defrauding labourers of their wages.

Every man's life belongs to God. No private individual has authority to take directly the life of the innocent. This applies equally well to the life of an unborn child. Direct abortion is murder. It is true that sometimes as a result of another operation, for example the removal of a diseased womb, the unborn child may die. In that case the death of the child is not chosen as the means to the end. But directly to kill the child is murder just as much as would be directly to kill the mother.

Under the heading of this Commandment also come anger, hatred, revenge, fighting, quarrelling and injurious words, All these things are against the love which we owe to our neighbour and therefore classed with murder which is the extreme example of a sin against love of our neighbour.

Here too must be classed scandal and bad example which may be called spiritual murder. Scandal here does not mean tittle tattle, but any action which may cause any person to sin. We share in the sin of another not only by being a partner in it but by advising, commanding or provoking the sin, by consenting to it, by defending or praising the sinfulness of another's act or by concealing the guilt from those who have a right to know it when it is our duty to tell it. (But notice that it is not always our duty to tell of another's sin. It would be wrong to speak of another's sin merely out of curiosity or still more in order to injure their character.)

Seventh Commandment

Thou shalt not steal.

This forbids all sins against justice. Not merely unjustly taking away or keeping what belongs to another. But all manner of cheating or swindling, failure to observe just contracts, defrauding servants of their just wages, oppression of the poor.

Under this Commandment also we must group relations between employers and employed. A workman has a right to a just wage, and that is, a wage that will keep himself and his family in a standard of living worthy of man. This may justify the State taking control of property in certain circumstances and cases in the interests of the common good.

"It is rightly contended," said Pope Pius XI, "that certain forms of property are best owned by the State since their possession confers too great a power on private individuals."

But for the State to deny all right to private property is against natural justice. In this matter the balance needs to be held between freedom and security. If the State owns all, men have security but they have lost their freedom. The same is true if a small body of private individuals owns the great bulk of the property of a nation.

The most just and reasonable system is where as many men as possible own something of their own but where private property is controlled and if necessary limited by law in the interests of all.

On the other hand the employee has duties as well as rights. He is bound to give an honest day's work in return for his wages and it is a sin to waste the employer's time and property. This is equally true, though more often forgotten, when the employer is the State.

A sin against justice will be more or less grave according to the gravity of the amount of injury done. In every case the one who has sinned is bound as far as possible to restore ill-gotten goods or to repair the injury done if he is to be forgiven by God.

Eighth Commandment

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

It forbids false testimony, rash judgment and lies. To injure another person's character by lying is called Calumny.

It is possible also to injure a person's character by telling the truth about him. This is wrong when it is no part of our duty to do so. A witness in court, a policeman, are obviously bound to tell the truth. A parent is bound to tell the truth about another person's character if it is necessary to warn his children. Other instances will readily occur to the mind of the reader. But what is wrong — it is called the sin of Detraction — is to tell the sins of another unnecessarily, for example out of curiosity or spite.

Tenth Commandment

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods

— forbids the sin in the heart which is Envy and an unjust desire to possess what belongs to another by hook or by crook. There is no harm in a man wishing he had a house as pleasant as his neighbour's. But it would be wrong to begrudge his neighbour his good fortune or to allow bitterness and envy to grow up in his heart.

The Sixth and Ninth Commandments are treated in this course under the subject of matrimony. (Lessons 14 and 15.) They deal with our duties towards God, oneself and our neighbour in the matter of the sexual instinct.

It is enough to notice here once more that the Commandment is not only concerned with actions, It is concerned also with all those things which lead to evil action, wilful consent to impure thoughts and desires, immodest and impure words, books, pictures and the like.

The Law of Love

The Commandments are set out in the form of prohibitions. But the law of God is not simply concerned with prohibitions. The law of God is a positive law. We must not set out simply to see how little harm we can do to our neighbour. We have to set out to do him whatever good we can. The ideal is put by Our Lord in these words when He was describing the last judgment (Matt. 25: 34 – 46).

"Then shall the king say to them that be on His right hand: Come, blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me to eat: I was thirsty and you gave Me to drink: I was a stranger and you took Me in: naked and you covered Me: sick and you visited Me: I was in prison and you came to Me. Then shall the just answer: Lord, when did we see Thee hungry and fed Thee: thirsty and gave Thee to drink? And when did we see Thee a stranger and took Thee in, or naked and covered Thee? Or when did we see Thee sick or in prison and came to Thee? And the King answering shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me" But to those who neglect charity Christ will say: "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels."

Once more we are brought back to the fundamental principle. We must see our neighbour as a son of God. We must see him as a brother of Christ Our Lord. More than that: because we are so closely bound to Christ by the fact that we are re-born in Him and live with His life in every one of our brethren we must see the figure of Christ Himself.

If you ever see a church dedicated to St. Martin you will see a picture of St. Martin giving his soldier's cloak to a naked beggar. The story goes that in a dream that night Christ appeared to
St. Martin wearing the cloak he had given away.

As long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me. (Matt. 25.)

End of Lesson 17

Supplement A

Appendix: "The Decalogue: The Ten Commandments"

Supplement B: "Go And Do Likewise!"

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