445. What does God prohibit by his command, “You shall not have other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2)? (part 1)

445. What does God prohibit by his command, “You shall not have other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2)? (part 1)      

(Comp 445) This commandment forbids: * Polytheism and idolatry, which divinizes creatures, power, money, or even demons. * Superstition which is a departure from the worship due to the true God and which also expresses itself in various forms of divination, magic, sorcery and spiritism. * Irreligion which is evidenced: in tempting God by word or deed; in sacrilege, which profanes sacred persons or sacred things, above all the Eucharist; and in simony, which involves the buying or selling of spiritual things. * Atheism which rejects the existence of God, founded often on a false conception of human autonomy. * Agnosticism which affirms that nothing can be known about God, and involves indifferentism and practical atheism.

“In brief”

(CCC 2138) Superstition is a departure from the worship that we give to the true God. It is manifested in idolatry, as well as in various forms of divination and magic.   

To deepen and explain

(CCC 2110) The first commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to his people. It proscribes superstition and irreligion. Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion; irreligion is the vice contrary by defect to the virtue of religion. (CCC 2111) Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition  (Cf. Mt 23:16-22). 

Reflection

(CCC 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" (Ps 115:4-5, 8; cf. Isa 44:9-20; Jer 10:1-16; Dan 14:1-30; Bar 6; Wis 13: 1- 15:19). God, however, is the "living God" (Josh 3:10; Ps 42:3; etc.) who gives life and intervenes in history. [IT CONTINUES]  

(The question: What does God prohibit by his command, “You shall not have other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2)? continues)