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Show 155: Intro to The 10 Commandments · The Uncensored Catholic

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Hey, welcome to today's show. We are just going to jump right in
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it. Today we're continuing in radio replies with people grilling the two priests,
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I mean, really asking him a lot of questions about the legitimacy of the
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pope. And after that we will get in back into fellow Sparago's exhaustive explanation
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of the Catechism, and we're beginning a new section today. We're going to
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start talking about the Ten Commandments. So the person asks, or does scripture
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say that Peter was ever Bishop of Rome? And they answer, scripture tells
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us that he was head of the church, which implicitly demands that he was
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the universal bishop, and also tells us, as I have said, that
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he was in Rome. A person says, how can you prove that he
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was the first pope? The word pope means father or head of the church,
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as an ordinary father is head of the family. Saint Peter was certainly
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in Rome, and he died there as bishop by legitimate succession. The one
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who succeeded as Bishop of Rome. Peter's death inherited the office of head of
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the church, or, as you would, if you wish, as father
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of the whole Christian family he was pope. All the bishops of Rome right
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through the centuries had belonged to the Catholic Church. No one disputes that they
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are known as pope's and Saint Peter was the first of that long line.
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Catholics rightly regard him as the first pope. If Saint Peter was pope,
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who was his successor? Saint Irenaeus, writing in the second century, gives
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us a list of the popes from Saint Peter as follows Linus, Cletus,
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Clement, Anaclidus, Everistus, Alexander, Zeistus, tell Us, Forus,
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Hyginus, Pius, an Acetus, Soda a boy Alorythrius Ailarythrius was reigning as
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pope at the time of Ironaeus. And I am sure I didn't pronounce that
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name right. I actually knew a guy from Mexico, and that was his
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name, and he pronounced it so weirdly with this like thick Mexican accent,
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And no matter what I did, he told me I was pronouncing his name
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wrong. So he asked me to call him Bob or something. He had
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more lisps and syllables in there that I could even begin to. I never
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did get it. I mean, he wrote it down. I'm like,
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oh, yeah, that's the name of of the popes, and he's like
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yeah, I'm like, what the heck did you just say? But anyway,
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they then asked, was Peter told by Christ to establish a Roman Catholic
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church? He was not told to establish a church. Christ established a church,
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chosing Peter. Choosing Peter as the foundation stone. The apostles were told
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to propagate the church Christ had established, and, of course, according to
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the constitution given it by himself, wherever Peter went, he remained head of
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that church church. And as he went to Rome and died there while still
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exercising his office, that office is necessarily attached to the See of Rome.
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This was not by a mere accident. We have to admit the guidance of
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the Holy Spirit in the choice made by Saint Peter in a matter of such
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moment. To the church. A person says, we Protestants can equally claim
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Peter with Catholics, which is an odd claim because they don't. I mean,
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yeah, maybe the Anglicans to a point, okay, and certainly you
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know, the Orthodox, but we don't really consider them a Protestant group.
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So much as a schismatic group. Anyway, Protestants cannot make that claim.
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Protestantism is essentially a protest against the Catholic Church, and therefore supposes that church
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as previously existing. If Peter had not consolidated and built up the Catholic Church,
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there would be no Protestantism to oppose it. In any case, Protestantism
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was unheard of until over fifteen hundred years after Saint peter death. Person says,
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as we do. The person asks, does your pope perform miracles as
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did Saint Peter? As we do not claim that he succeeds to the power
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of working miracles. Such a criterion is irreverent, irrevelant in this matter.
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And the person goes on to say or to ask, all that you have
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said seems reasonable in itself, but this monarchical hierarchy seems dreadfully opposed to the
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spirit of the Gospel, which Christ, which proposes Christ is the only mediator.
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This is very common when you actually talk with, you know, a
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not anti Catholic, reasonable Protestant. They cannot, oftentimes will not accept that
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the church has a hierarchy. That Jesus established offices, especially the Office of
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the priesthood and the pope. So they say that, you know, a
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personal relationship with God is all that matters. But meanwhile, in the Gospels,
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Jesus assigned them roles, gave them certain authority. And then you go
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through the acts of the Apostles and the letters to the because the books of
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Verst Second Peter, all the letters of Saint John give specifically stating the authority
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of the apostles, the presbyters, the deacons, et cetera. But they
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act like that just doesn't exist, that all you need is a Bible.
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Well, the answer Christ is the one principal mediator, but he himself chooses
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to dispense mediation through secondary agents. There is but one King of England.
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But that does not deny the existence of officials to whom royal power is delegated.
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If fifty officials act in the name of the king, that does not
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make fifty kings. Now Christ designated his Now Christ delegated his power to priests,
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and as the one mediator, acts through many channels. Saint Paul wrote
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to the Corinthians, let a man so account of us, as of the
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ministers of Christ, and the dispensers of thes and the dispensers of the mysteries
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of God. First Corinthians. For to one, in the Epistle to the
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Hebrews, we read that the priest ought as for the people, so also
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for himself, to offer for sins. This cannot refer to Christ, who
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certainly had not to offer for his own sins. And we'll leave it there.
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We'll go on to the catechism, and we are going to start today
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this new chapter. Believe it or not, we are now three hundred and
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six pages in to follow Sparago's exhaustive Catechism of the Catholic Church, of which
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there are seven hundred and forty four pages. So y'all we're getting close to
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halfway. It's quite a book. I mean, you know, the modern
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Catechism is about the same length. But I really think this is the very
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best common terry on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It's timeless. You
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know. This can apply to the Boston Catechism, this can apply to the
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modern Catechism, this could apply to I mean, this could have been given
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to the earliest members of the church, the earliest church fathers or earliest Christians.
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Say, you know, two thousand years ago, and it would have
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been just as cogent and just as understandable, and just as relevant to the
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faith as they knew it, and the doctrine as they knew it as it
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is today. And that's really saying something. I mean, it is such
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a well written book. It's so easy to understand. As I've said so
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many times, I wish our Catholic leaders today, especially in the Vatican,
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could write as simply, understandably, cogently as Father Sparago did in the eighteen
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eighties eighteen nineties. There's no reason they can't, except I don't know.
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They just seem to like confused people, or to impress people by using big,
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esoteric words. There's no point in it. If you can say something
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in two sentences, you don't need to write two paragraphs the same thing.
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If you can say it in a page, you don't need one hundred pages.
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You know, of course, you know. I studied journalism and worked
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as a journalist for a while. Where we write an article, we're then
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taught to go back through it and cut at least one word out of every
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sentence, one sentence out of every paragraph, and one paragraph at least from
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the entire work we have to get We might write, you know, two
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thousand words, we have to get it down to five hundred and seven hundred
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and fifty words without losing a single salient point for fact. There's no reason
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people can't do that in every walk of life. Nob one's impressed by your
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wordy, lengthy documents that someone has to have, you know, a thesaurus,
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a dictionary, and a degree in theology to understand. Nobody's impressed.
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You're not accomplishing anything. If you say something and no one understands it.
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It's like if a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear
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it didn't really fall right, all right? So the Ten Commandments were given
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by God to the Jews on Mount Sinai. The proclamation of the Commandments took
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place on the fiftieth day after the exit of the Israelites from Egypt. When
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giving them, God prefaced them with the solemn announcement, I am the Lord
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thy God Exodus twenty verse two. Acting as a monarch who places his name
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and titles at the head of the decree he issues to inspire his subjects with
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respect. The Ten Commandments were written by God on two Tables of Stone to
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indicate that they were only an amplification of the two commandments of charity, love
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of God and love of neighbor. They are called the Commandments of God because
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he is their author. They are also known as the Decalogue I e.
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Ten words. We must hero mark that the Catholic Church, acting under the
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guidance of the Holy Spirit, has slightly altered the Decalogue in Christian In a
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Christian sense, the Jewish Decalogue given on Mount Sinai consists of these precepts.
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One the command to worship no God but the True God. Two, the
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prohibition against worshiping images, three the prohibition against taking God's name in vain.
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For the command to keep holy the Sabbath, five, the command of honouran's
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parents. Six, the prohibition against murder, seven, adultry, eight,
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theft, nine false witness, ten covening other men's goods. Exes Twenty one
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through seventeen. The Catholic Church has joined the second commandment forbidding the worship of
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images to the first, and dividing the tenth into two separate commands in order
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that the Christian wife may be duly respected. The commandment to keep holy the
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Sabbath is changed into the precept to sanctify Sunday in the Holy Days. The
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idea of the Jews that upon each table five laws were inscribed is probably correct,
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since the first five commandments of the Jewish Decologue contain their duty towards God
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and his representatives, and the latter five the duty towards neighbor. Moreover,
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God when answering the rich young Man began with the Precept against Murder, and
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Saint Paul classed together the last five commands of the Jewish Decalogue, which corresponds
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to the six of the Christian Christians are bound to observe the Ten Commandments of
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God because both because God has imprinted them upon the human heart and because Christ
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laid them upon us anew in a more full and perfect form. The ten
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commandments are binding on us, who are Christians. They were imprinted on the
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heart of every man. It was only because the divine light in man had
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been obscured by evil ways and corrupt manners that the law was given upon Sinai.
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Thus what man would no longer read in his own heart was inscribed on
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tables of stone. Christ reiterated the Ten Commandments when speaking to the rich youth
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Matthew twenty nine eighteen, And in the Sermon of the Mount and un the
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Sirm of the Mount, several of them e g. The second by declaring
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unnecessary oaths to be simple, or the fifth and eighth, when he prescribed
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hadred and calmeny, proscribed prohibited hatred and calmeny, and even rejoined the love
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of our enemies, the sixth by condemning the indulgence of evil desires. The
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ten commandments of God are arranged in order. The first three comprise our duty
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to God as our supreme ruler. In the first commandment, he requires from
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us worship and fidelity in the second, reverence in the third servants service.
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The fourth contains our duty toward those who are God's representives on earth, and
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who are, at the same time of all men, our greatest benefactors.
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The remaining six commandments contain our duties to ourselves and our fellow men. The
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fifth is for protection of life, the sixth purity, the seventh property,
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the eighth honor, the ninth and tenth of domestic life of one's neighbor.
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He who keeps all these commandments receives a great way from God on earth,
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and after death he may look forward to eternal felicity as his portion. God
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has ordained that what it is to us the means of attaining everlasting happiness,
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should also promote welfare on earth. Godliness has the promise of the life that
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is now and of that which is to come one Timothy four eight. He
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who observes God's commandments obtains interior content, contentedness. You know, we would
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say. He just says content, health, honor, riches, and a
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more intimate knowledge of God. David says to God, much peace have they
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that love Thy law? And to them there is no stumbling block that's in
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psalms. By Thy commandments I have had understanding. He also said that he
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who keeps God's commandments triumphs over suffering and persecution. His house is built upon
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a rock, and the force of the elements is impotent to overthrow it.
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Matthew seven twenty five. Only by the bridge of obedience can we enter into
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heaven. It is a bridge with ten arches. According to Saint Vincent Ferrara,
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if our reward on earth is but trifling, our reward in heaven will
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be all the greater. It would be a recompense, surpassing all of our
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hopes and expectations, without limit and without end. He fulfills his promise,
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who gives more and better than was expected of him, said Saint Jerome.
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Temporal and eternal chastisements await the man who grievously violates a single one of these
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commandments. He who transgresses the commandments will have both temporal and eternal punishment,
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the temporal punishments of sinner and general discontent, sickness, the loss of honor
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or property, hunger, and other miseries. He whose does not keep God's
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commandments will have no help from God in the time of his affliction. Our
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Lord says, the house of such a one has built on sand and will
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be destroyed. Matthew seven twenty seven. The lightnings and smoke on Mount Sinai
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are typical of the fire which will be the penalty of those who transgress God's
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law. Whosoever shall keep the whole law of God but Afiniah, and then
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one point is guilty of all James two ten. The reason of this is
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because all the commandments form one whole. They are so closely bound up together
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that one cannot be maintained without the others. He who violates one commandment transgresses
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law of charity, on which all the commandments depend. According to Saint Augustine,
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in this they are like a stringed instrument. One broken string will ruin
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the melody. Yeah, we can kind of work around one broken string.
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But you know that's me speaking as a musician. I'm not speaking morally.
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But so one broken string will ruin the melody. Or like the human body,
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if one member it would be diseased. It is enough to cause death.
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If the whole city is guarded in one part left unattached, the enemy
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will affect an entrance. The lost in Hell kept a great many of the
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commandments. They are damned because they did not keep all. It is not
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a difficult matter to keep these commandments, as long as God helps us with
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his grace. Christ says to his followers, my yoke is easy, and
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my burden is liked Matthew eleven thirty. Saint John said to the Christians,
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his commandments are not heavy First John five to three. The burden is heavy
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in itself, but God assists us with the grace to bear it if we
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ask him. Saint Augustine says, when God lays a command upon THEE,
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he requires THEE to do all thou canst, and in what thou canst not
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do, to implore his help, and He will enable THEE to do it.
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I can do all things in Christ that strengthen me Philippians four thirteen.
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Moreover, the examples of the saints who went before us serves to encourage us.
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All right, y'all, that's sort of an introduction to the Ten Commandments.
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Next time we'll actually get to the first one, you know, the
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first commandment being I am the word they got Thou shalt have no strange gods
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before me. Okay, but we're not just going to talk about I mean,
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we're really going to get into the meaning behind these mamments. And this
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one, I guess Father's Barago would say attends to this one involves the adoration
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or worship of God. So it's actually you're going to get a lot of
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insights from these. Don't think we're just gonna say thou shalt not kill,
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thou should not commit adultry, just like the modern catechism. We're going to
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really get into the whys and hows and all that. But really the spirit
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of it, and it's really going to enrich your understanding and just give you
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a whole new respect and feeling about the Ten Commandments that you know, we
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don't get as when we're kids just being taught memorization. You know, we're
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all taught to memorize the Ten Commandments. I remember going into my great grandparents'
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home, big plaque, beautiful actually carving of the Ten Commandments, and you
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know, I just sit there while I was waiting, and I'd read them,
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and you know, go to Sunday school, but it was memorized the
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Ten Commandments. Memorize the Ten Commandments. This is not wrote memory, okay,
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This gets into the real heart and meaning, the philosophy, the theology
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of each of these ten precepts. So you're actually going to really enjoy this.
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It's not gonna be dry, I promise you. If you have been
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with me this long going through Fathers Broger's book, you know he's not a
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dry writer. He actually had a lot of insight and humor. It's kind
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of hard to put down his book when you pick it up, and I
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hope I do a decent job in interpreting it to you. One of the
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few things I actually gained from going to a certain Southern Baptist university. It
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was a class called oral interpretation. I did not want to take this class.
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It was required. I got in there. I had no idea what
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this class was about. It was simply reading aloud. You know. I
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totally got the wrong idea when I went in there. And you know,
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I had studied storytelling, and I had been a musicianist storyteller and all this.
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Not an actor by age. You mean. So I had a lot
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of acting friends when I was in high school. I used to run lines
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with them, and they were always like blown away that they'd hand me like
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a play and they say, okay, you know, and I'd read it
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and I basically memorized the entire thing. And so I was like a natural
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in running lines with them. Right they were stumbling over they couldn't remember,
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and I'd be just I had the whole narrative in my head and I knew
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it exactly what to say. When I got to or interpretation class, instead
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of reading the works, I actually would memorize them and walk up and do
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them in the accent of the writer. Kind of blew everybody's mind and I
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got a perfect a in it and said was told I was the best person
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who had ever taken the class. I did better than anybody ever had.
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That was great because I went straight from there into doing like talk radio and
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such, and you know, I kind of I had mentors ment such as
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G. Gordon Liddy and such and talk radio, and it was hugely influential,
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great training, actually, And I hope when I read to you,
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fellow Sprague's work, I give it to you in a clear way, an
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understanding, understandable way. You know, I do stum over some words.
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You know that's going to happen, and I am a little dyslexic. I
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get a little crossed up sometimes, but hopefully I give it to you in
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a way and then can explain certain difficult passages in a way that you can
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enjoy it and understand it. It's not I'm not trying to do an audio
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book of the book. I'm trying to do a representation of it with commentary.
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And you know, I know when I was considering converting Catholicism or a
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new catholic a resource such as this that I could have put on during my
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commute to class or to work would have been really great. I had Scott
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Hand's Answers to Common Objection series. That was I remember how important that was
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to me. That was huge. And in many ways this explanation of the
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Catechism is like along the same lines, but like one hundred thousand times more
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in depth, well at least ten thousand times more in depth. So I
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hope you are enjoying it. Remember passing on friends, family, and loved
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ones. Let's grow the audience. Let's use this to bring people into the
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church or strengthen the knowledge and faith those who are already Catholic. And let's
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pray for the conversion of all. I mean the Protestant Mainland Protestant churches are
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withering on the vine. I have noticed just recently on social media there are
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a lot of Lutherans and Calvinists that are going out like really trying to promote
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their doctrine and openly like attacking and challenging Catholics. And I'm not surprised.
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I mean they basically bring a knife to a gun fight every time. I
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mean, they'll put out like they'll put out these just ridiculous statements, you
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know, like well, like we've talked about before, they'll say, you
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know, faith alone is all it is necessary for salvation. Well, every
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action, whether mental or physical, of a man or a woman is a
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work. To think is a work. To believe is a work. To
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pray as a work, to read the Bible's work. To repent is a
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work. To be baptized is a work. To preach, to teach,
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to forgive, those are all works. To have faith is even a work
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because one has to do the work of belief. One has to say,
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consider the facts and say, oh, I actually do believe this before one
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can have faith in So when they say faith alone, and you know,
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Martin Luther evens changed the words of Jesus to say faith alone, and you
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know, took out the part about works. No, Jesus said, if
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you love me, you'll follow my commandments. Jesus said, you must be
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baptized. You know, you must be born again of war and the spirit,
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et cetera, et cetera. It does require works. So when a
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Lutheran or a Calvinish or whatever comes out there and says solo fida, Catholics
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are all about works, just using a little bit of logic. A Catholic
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with even a lick of sense, as we say here in the South can't
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refute that. Well. I think they're doing it really because their churches are
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dying. You know, they never recovered from COVID. They were in decline
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since the seventies, and when divorce really became accepted in the eighties and nineties
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and two thousands, their church populations began dwindling and dwelling, and then COVID
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shut them down and most people didn't come back. So they're getting kind of
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militant out there trying to challenge Catholics because basically, especially for Lutherans, most
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people that leave their church either become atheists, agnostics, or Catholic probably.
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I mean, you know some are going to go to a charismatic evangelical church,
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sure, but you know that may be they may be a while a
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mile wide, but an inch deep. I mean those megachurches, there are
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a lot of them converring to Catholicism. So now more than ever, we
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need to know our catechism, We need to know our doctrine, we need
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to know our theology, and we needed to know the logic behind it.
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And that's where Father Sparagra's book is so invaluable. So I hope you'll find
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this a really great resource and share it with friends and family. And you
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know, I don't know if most Protestant churches are going to be around in
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another fifty or one hundred years, but I see the Catholic Church growing.
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I mean, you know, I know, I'm in the South. I
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don't have a full you know, Global View or now National View, but
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in the South, the Catholic Church is growing by leaps and bounds. Every
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church seems to be just packed to the gills, every mass. In all
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cases, there are some very small, like economically depressed towns where maybe there
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used to be a factory or something that's closed. And these little usually mission
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parishes to start with, they've either just there's still a mission church but they
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only have a Hispanic mass, or they've just closed. And that's a shame
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as sad. But in any city where there are actually jobs or any community
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you know that isn't like dying. Actually, I mean, I'm thinking of
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two or three towns right now that are in the eastern part of North Carolina
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where there's just no jobs. I mean when tobacco and cotton left and through
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NAFTA, and I mean there's just no jobs. So the people are there
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longer there, and the churches are closing, but their new church is being
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built and the church is packed. So I mean, I can honestly see
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that in a couple of generations be far fewer Protestant churches. And it's like,
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you got a choice. But if you want to be if you want
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to be Christian, your only choice is to become Catholic. If that be
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the case, we need to The priests can't do it all themselves. And
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the guy who keeps teaches the RCIA class that your parish can only handle so
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much. You know, we need to be able to share with our friends
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and our family and anybody we encounter they say, oh, you're Catholic,
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Tell me what that means, or why do you do this? A lot
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of times you're gonna be challenged, well, why do you worship statues?
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Well, you tell them, we don't worship statues. We don't worship statues
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at all. And I've done a whole show on that, so I'm not
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gonna waste your time with it. Right now, you can go back some
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of the first ones I did. I think it's actually entitled no, Catholics
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don't worship statues. So if you want to check that one out. But
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anyway, y'all in the world words of Saint Padre Pia, pray, hope,
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don't worry, and I'll talk to you next time.