Chapter
22

The Last Three Commandments

In This Chapter

Understanding lying and secrets in the eighth commandment: you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

Being pure of heart in the ninth commandment: you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife

Shunning greed and envy in the tenth commandment: you shall not covet your neighbor’s goods

Applying the last three commandments to modern-day life

At first glance, the last three commandments of the Decalogue may seem a little old-fashioned. Bearing false witness and coveting a neighbor’s wife feel outdated on some level. So you may be wondering what these commandments have to do with life in the modern world.

Well, it turns out these commandments are more relevant to life today than you are likely to imagine. Once you take them out of the older, more vague—at least to our ears—language, you find that we are talking about lying and gossip, lust and immodesty, greed and envy. Sounds like the basis of any number of nighttime TV dramas.

In this chapter, we are going to discuss the real-life meaning of these commandments and what the Church teaches is the proper response to the neighbor who always seems to have the nicer car, the bigger house, the better job, the smarter kids ….

#8: To Tell the Truth

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Exodus 20:16)

The eighth commandment is all about truth and offenses against truth. The Catechism says that “misrepresenting the truth,” whether through our words or actions, is a sin against God, “who is truth and wills the truth.” (2464)

Also, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) If believers follow Jesus, they live in the “spirit of truth.” (2466)

The Catechism explains that humans lean “by nature toward the truth” and that they are impelled, because of their God-given dignity, to seek out the truth and to live according to the truth once they know it. (2467)

Church Speak

Truthfulness is the virtue that makes us want to tell the truth and show ourselves true to others in deeds and words, as well as guarding against hypocrisy. It is about honesty in all things, but also about “discretion” when appropriate. Yes, we must always tell the truth, but we must also know when to keep a secret in good faith. (2468–2469)

This commandment is about more than not bearing false witness against a neighbor; it is about “bearing witness to the truth.” For Christians, that means standing up and being a witness to the faith through words and the example of their lives. In extreme cases, bearing witness to the truth has meant martyrdom, which is when being a witness to the faith costs someone his or her life. (2471–2473)

Beyond Lying

When it comes to bearing false witness, in addition to lying, there are a series of specific offenses against the truth spelled out in the Catechism. Starting off the list is false witness and perjury, both of which compromise justice and fairness in judicial decisions. “False witness” is a public statement contrary to the truth; perjury is a knowingly false statement made under oath. (2476)

Next we have respect for reputation, which means avoiding anything that would unjustly injure someone. These sins include rash judgment, which is when you assume something bad about someone to be true without any evidence; detraction, which is when you go around talking about other people’s “faults and failings” for no good reason; and calumny, which is when you tell a lie that hurts another person’s reputation and maybe causes other people to draw false conclusions about them. (2477)

Rounding out the list are flattery and adulation, which are especially bad when they are done to achieve some sort of goal that isn’t particularly good or when they contribute to a vice or sin. Boasting is off limits, as is, surprisingly enough, irony when it is “aimed at disparaging someone” by caricaturing a certain behavior. (2480–2481)

And finally we have outright lying, which, of course, is a pretty obvious and direct offense against truth. The Catechism explains that if you lie, you are speaking or acting “against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has a right to know the truth.” (2483)

The Church is pretty clear on the issue of lying, saying that it “does real violence to another” and that is it “destructive of society.” (2486)

Teachable Moment

If you do tell a lie, you’re going to have to make up for it in a pretty big way. The Church says liars must make reparations, public ones if at all possible, to rectify the situation and restore the reputation of the injured party. (2487)

Keeping Secrets

So if truth is a virtue and lying is a sin, what do we do when we know a secret truth? Are we obliged to reveal it as part of our duty to bear witness to the truth? No. The Catechism explains that there is no unconditional and universal “right to the communication of the truth.” In other words, there may be times when it is not appropriate to reveal truthful but confidential information. (2488)

How do we know when it’s okay to keep a secret and when it’s a sin? “Charity and respect for the truth” must determine whether something should be kept secret. “No one is bound to reveal the truth to someone who does not have the right to know it,” the Catechism says. (2489)

The secrecy of the sacrament of confession, which we discussed in Chapter 13, is absolute and can never be violated. In addition, “professional secrets,” such as confidential information between doctors and patients or lawyers and clients, must be kept private unless “very grave harm” would result. (2490–2491)

Communications and Sacred Art

Modern media plays a pretty critical and influential role in our society, and so the Church gives a shout out to all communication media in this portion of the Catechism.

The Catechism explains that information provided by the media is “at the service of the common good” and that society has a right to expect that information to be based on “truth, freedom, justice, and solidarity.” (2494) It specifically calls on journalists to take on two obligations: 1) to “serve the truth” and 2) not to “offend against charity in disseminating information.” (2497)

Truth, the Catechism says, is “beautiful in itself,” and as such, often inspires humans to express the truth through various art forms. When art is inspired by the truth, it “bears a certain likeness to God’s activity in what he has created.” Sacred art, which is any art that depicts sacred or religious subjects in order to give glory to God, in particular, can evoke the “transcendent mystery of God.” The Catechism calls on bishops to promote sacred art and to remove from churches or liturgical celebrations anything that is not in conformity with the truth of faith and the “authentic beauty” that defines sacred art. (2500–2503)

#9: Not Lusting After Another

You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. (Exodus 20:17)

So what exactly are we talking about when we abide by this commandment? Is this about not pursuing the desperate housewife who lives across the street? And isn’t this type of thing already covered in the sixth commandment about adultery? Not entirely. The ninth commandment challenges us to strive for purity and to avoid what the Church calls “carnal concupiscence,” which is a very intimidating way of saying that you can’t lust after another person. And, ladies, don’t think the noninclusive language lets us off the hook here. Lust is a two-way street and is equally sinful whether the object is a woman or a man.

We talked a lot about this in Chapter 20, when we discussed adultery. But unlike adultery, which is a sinful action, breaking this commandment has to do mainly with sinful thoughts and desires. Jesus said, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28)

Those are some pretty strong words, so let’s look at what it means for our day-to-day lives. This commandment is about purity of heart. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” Jesus said during the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5:8)

The Catechism explains if we are “pure in heart,” our minds and wills will be “attuned” to God’s demands for holiness, especially in the areas of charity, chastity, love for the truth, and orthodoxy of faith. (2518) It is only with a pure heart that we can eventually see God and are able to see those around us as reflections of “divine beauty.” (2519)

To achieve a pure heart requires some effort on our part. Baptism gives us a push in the right direction, but even the baptized are not free from disordered desires. We have to count on God’s grace—through the virtue and gift of chastity—to give us what we need to prevail and make us want to seek to fulfill God’s will in everything. (2520)

Church Speak

Modesty is an important part of purity and influences how we dress and how we act. The Catechism says modesty “protects the intimate center of the person” and is equivalent to “decency.” (2521–2522)

That’s a pretty lofty proposition, to get to the point where we can keep our hearts and minds so focused on God that we never allow any lustful or covetous thoughts in. But that is the long-term goal of this commandment. If you live the ninth commandment to the letter of the law, you will have a heart that is pure, centered on God, and able to withstand the kinds of temptations that typically trip folks up.

#10: Not Keeping Up with the Joneses

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house … nor anything else that belongs to him. (Exodus 20:17)

The tenth and final commandment “completes” the ninth, the Catechism explains. Where the ninth commandment is concerned with desires of the flesh, the tenth is concerned with the desire for material things that can lead to greed and envy at one end of the scale, and robbery and fraud at the other. (2534)

Banishing Greed and Envy

It’s normal to desire things. We get hungry and desire food. We get cold and desire a coat. Those kinds of desires are okay. It’s when we let our desires morph into greed for things we don’t really need or into avarice, which is a vice focused on amassing money and power, that the problems begin. (2535–2536) These sins, along with the desire to commit injustice by harming our neighbor in her temporal goods, are strictly forbidden by the tenth commandment.

What about envy? At some time or another we all probably feel a twinge of envy over something someone else has. Seems normal enough in our world, right? Well, normal or not, the Catechism says envy can lead to the worst crimes and must be “banished from the human heart.” (2538)

Envy, one of the seven deadly or capital sins, occurs when we feel bad over someone else’s good fortune. You’ve probably experienced it once or twice. The neighbor gets a shiny new sports car or the guy in the cubicle next to you gets the promotion you thought was yours. That’s envy at its finest. Now, when that bad feeling rises to the level of wishing something bad on the neighbor or the co-worker, it becomes a mortal sin. (2539)

Teachable Moment

Envy comes from everyday things that worm their way into our psyches and make us act in not-so-nice ways: pride is the big culprit here. To avoid envy, we must show goodwill toward others and “live in humility.” That means taking pleasure in someone else’s accomplishments. (2540)

Poverty of Spirit

As usual, it’s not enough simply to avoid the bad stuff related to this commandment. We are challenged to work toward detachment from material things, to a spiritual place where we achieve the “poverty of heart” that Jesus preached about. “Every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple,” Jesus said. (Luke 14:33) Hence, if you don’t break that all-I-want-is-everything way of thinking, you can’t get into the kingdom of heaven. (2544)

But what does that mean for those of us who live in the world and cannot give away everything we have to follow Jesus? It doesn’t mean we cannot truly follow Jesus if we have money or belongings; what it means is those things cannot be more important to us than Jesus. We have to be poor in spirit and we have to be willing to turn our lives over to God without worrying about what will happen tomorrow. (2544, 2546–2547)

Jesus told his disciples, “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.” (Matthew 6:34)

The Greatest Desire

If we keep our eyes on God and focus our desires on “true happiness,” we can free ourselves from the worldly attachments that threaten to drag us down. This doesn’t mean we won’t struggle from time to time or take one step forward and two steps back. But with God’s grace we can overcome those human weaknesses and reach a place where the “way of perfection” becomes more important to us than things, power, success, or glory. We can reach the point where the stuff we own doesn’t own us. (2548–2550)

The Least You Need to Know

Not bearing false witness, as proscribed by the eighth commandment, means not lying, gossiping, committing perjury, assassinating character, or revealing a secret that should be kept.

In the ninth commandment, coveting your neighbor’s spouse means you should avoid any deliberate cultivation of desires of the flesh, like lust, immodesty, or impurity of thoughts.

The final commandment prohibits greed, envy, and the insatiable hunger for power or money.

It’s not enough to avoid coveting; you have to work toward being “poor in spirit” so that you are detached from material things.