Does anyone ever wonder why the Ten Commandments lists the Commandment to Honor ones parents before the Commandment to forbid killing? What does anyone think God may be saying here? Does the Catholic Church have any teachings regarding this particular arrangement?

Karl

-- Karl (Parkerkajwen@hotmail.com), November 20, 2003

Answers

I don't believe there's any official Church teaching. I might speculate that the "priority" granted to the 'earlier' commandments is not one of importance but precedence; honoring one's parents gets pride of place among the last 7 commandments because Mom and Dad are, after all, our childhood magisterium. :) Just as the 2nd and 3rd commandments flow from the 1st, the last 6 might be viewed as consequents of the 4th.

-- Skoobouy (skoobouy@hotmail.com), November 20, 2003.

Other than the fact that our duties to God are appropriately listed before our duties to one another, the Ten Commandments are not listed in "order of importance". They are all of equal importance. God alone knows the reason, if any, for the particular order in which He first presented them.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), November 20, 2003.

St. Thomas had an idea why they were in this order. It's harder to read than I remember, though. I have to get back into this stuff.

[Catherine attempts to download the Summa.]

-- Catherine Ann (catfishbird@yahoo.ca), November 20, 2003.

It also could just be random order...

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), November 20, 2003.

From "Reply to objection 2" (from St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, at the link above):

"Just as God is the universal principle of being in respect of all things, so is a father a principle of being in respect of his son. Therefore the precept regarding parents was fittingly placed after the precepts regarding God. This argument holds in respect of affirmative and negative precepts about the same kind of deed: although even then it is not altogether cogent. For although in the order of execution, vices should be uprooted before virtues are sown, according to Ps. 33:15: "Turn away from evil, and do good," and Is. 1:16,17: "Cease to do perversely; learn to do well"; yet, in the order of knowledge, virtue precedes vice, because "the crooked line is known by the straight" (De Anima i): and "by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20)."

So, no, it's not random. They are in perfect order.

Simply put, positive rules are placed before negative rules: "do this" comes before "don't do that", because in the spiritual life of the soul, one must know virtue first in order to then know what vice is.

-- Psyche +AMDG+ (psychicquill@yahoo.com), November 21, 2003.