r/Catholicism•
ducati916

Exodus 20:4-5 "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above..." Are we catholics breaking a commandment?

Hi I've been brought up a catholic and its only recently that i've started to take my faith seriously. I've been reading through scripture and trying to understand why we do the things we do.

sorry if this has come up before, i searched the sub reddit and could not find anything related to this.

About the Ten Commandments, i know this particular bit of exodus is used by protestants to say that catholics dropped one of the commandments.

In my research so far all i have come up with is that the catholic church groups exodus, which is around 16 verses into 10 commandments, differently from the way protestants do. therefore we have not dropped a commandment.

but putting aside how both sides group exodus, i'm really confused about it. By putting up statues of jesus, mary and all the saints in our churches and praying/worshiping in front of them are we ignoring what is in the scripture?

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

Posted Mar 24, 2012, 9:06 PM UTC

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