YOUCAT Question n. 351 - Aren’t the Ten Commandments outmoded?
(Youcat
answer) No, the Ten Commandments are by no means the product of a particular
time. They express man’s fundamental obligations toward God and neighbor, which
are always and everywhere valid.
A deepening through CCC
(CCC 2070)
The Ten Commandments belong to God's revelation. At the same time they teach us
the true humanity of man. They bring to light the essential duties, and
therefore, indirectly, the fundamental rights inherent in the nature of the
human person. The Decalogue contains a privileged expression of the natural
law: From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of
the natural law. Then he was content to remind him of them. This was the
Decalogue (St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres.
4, 15, 1: PG 7/l, 1012). (CCC 2072) Since they express man's fundamental duties
towards God and towards his neighbor, the Ten Commandments reveal, in their
primordial content, grave
obligations. They are fundamentally immutable, and they oblige always and
everywhere. No one can dispense from them. The Ten Commandments are engraved by
God in the human heart.
Reflecting and meditating
(Youcat comment) The Ten Commandments are commandments of
reason just as they are also part of the binding Revelation of God. They are so
fundamentally binding that no one can be dispensed from keeping these
commandments
(CCC Comment)
(CCC 2071)
The commandments of the Decalogue, although accessible to reason alone, have
been revealed. To attain a complete and certain understanding of the
requirements of the natural law, sinful humanity needed this revelation: A full
explanation of the commandments of the Decalogue became necessary in the state
of sin because the light of reason was obscured and the will had gone astray
(St. Bonaventure, Comm. sent. 4, 37,
1, 3). We know God's commandments through the divine revelation proposed to us
in the Church, and through the voice of moral conscience.
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