Have We Forgotten the Ten Commandments?

by Letters Editor · Published March 14, 2018 · Updated March 11, 2018

Tony Meehan, Cape Town – Catholics, and other religions, accept the Ten Commandments as the basic rules of life. When these commandments were handed down, they were simple and easily understood, and related to the time. In 2018, and the very different world of today, the Church should revisit the “old” Commandments with a view to bringing them into the 21st century. It has the power to do so: “What is considered changed on earth will be changed in heaven.”

Consideration should be given to ruling definitively on modern and possibly perceived problems and conformities: prejudice (one of the most egregious sins today); women and child abuse; specific murdering of the unborn (as opposed to the relatively passive, “You shall not kill”); racism and xenophobia; greed; selfishness and corruption; the taking of drugs; self-inflicted anorexia; body piercing and tattooing (is the body still “the temple of the soul”?); pornography; cyberbullying; participating in violent computer games, and many more.

Gay unions and same-sex marriages seem to be a particularly grey area in our perception and interpretation of these modern practices.

Expanding the Commandments to Encompass New Problems

Which set of rules should provide for these variable societal activities? Are we sitting on the fence and leaving it to individual consciences? Do the “old” patriarchal commandments really suffice?

Maybe the above situations are just human frailty and weakness, and should be tolerated with compassion and understanding; or whatever? No need for any condemnation or corrective rules.

Because some of these contemporary idiosyncrasies are theologically difficult to fully comprehend, the Church should take the lead to “change on earth” and proclaim new “you shall not” rules for those modern-life habits which it deems to attract sinfulness.

It should also instruct priests to preach and apprise the faithful more fully on its teachings thereof.

Guide me, O thou great Redeemer!