In theCatholic Church, thePrecepts of the Church, sometimes called the Commandments of the Church, are certain laws considered binding on the faithful. As usually understood, they are moral and ecclesiastical, broad in character and limited in number. In modern times there are five.
TheCatechism of the Catholic Church promulgates the following:[1][2]
- You shall attendMass on Sundays and onholy days of obligation and rest from servile labor
- You shall confess your sins at least once a year
- You shall receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least during the Easter season
- You shall observe the days of fasting and abstinence established by the Church
- You shall help to provide for the needs of the Church
TheCompendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, §. 432, enumerates the same five:[3]
- to attend Mass on Sundays and otherholy days of obligation and to refrain from work and activities which could impede the sanctification of those days;
- to confess one's sins, receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation at least once each year;
- to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least during the Easter season;
- to abstain from eating meat and to observe the days of fasting established by the Church.
- to help to provide for the material needs of the Church, each according to his own ability.
Previously there were six commandments. The sixth being: "Not to marry persons within theforbidden degrees of kindred or otherwise prohibited by the Church; nor to solemnize marriage at the forbidden times".[4]
The authority to enact laws obligatory on all the faithful belongs to the Catholic Church by the very nature of her constitution, says theCatholic Encyclopedia. The Catholic Church considers itself the appointed public organ and interpreter ofGod'srevelation for all time. The Catholic Church also claims that for the effective discharge of its office, it must be empowered to give its laws the gravest sanction. These laws, when they bind universally, have for their object:[5]
All these laws when binding on the faithful universally are truly commandments of the Catholic Church. In the technical sense, however, the table of these Commandments does not contain doctrinal pronouncements. Such an inclusion would render it too complex. The Commandments of the Church (in this restricted sense) are moral and ecclesiastical, and as a particular code of precepts are necessarily broad in character and limited in number.[5]
As early as the time ofConstantine I, especial insistence was put upon the obligation to hear Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, to receive the sacraments and to abstain from contracting marriage at certain seasons. In the seventh-centuryPenitentiary ofTheodore of Canterbury we find penalties imposed on those whocontemn the Sunday.[5]
According to a work written byRegino, the abbot of Prüm (d. 915), entitledLibri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis, the bishop should ask in his visitation:[5]
"if anyone has not kept the fast of Lent, or of the ember-days, or of the rogations, or that which may have been appointed by the bishop for the staying of any plague; if there be any one who has not gone to Holy Communion three time in the year, that is at Easter, Pentecost and Christmas; if there be any one who has withheld tithes from God and His saints; if there be anyone so perverse and so alienated from God as not to come to Church at least on Sundays; if there be anyone who has not gone to confession once in the year, that is at the beginning of Lent, and has not done penance for his sins."
The precepts here implied came to be regarded as special Commandments of the Church. Thus in a book of tracts of the thirteenth century attributed toPope Celestine V (though the authenticity of this work has been denied) a separate tractate is given to the precepts of the Church and is divided into four chapters, the first of which treats of fasting, the second of confession and paschal Communion, the third of interdicts on marriage, and the fourth of tithes.[5]
In the fourteenth centuryErnest von Parduvitz,Archbishop of Prague, instructed his priests to explain in popular sermons the principal points of the catechism, the Our Father, the Creed, the Commandments of God and of the Church (Hafner, loc. cit., 115). A century later (1470) the catechism ofDietrick Coelde, the first, it is said, to be written in German, explicitly set forth that there were five Commandments of the Church.[5]
In hisSumma Theologica (part I, tit. xvii, p. 12)Antoninus of Florence (1439) enumerates ten precepts of the Church universally binding on the faithful. These are:[5]
In the sixteenth centuryMartin Aspilcueta (1586), gives a list of four principal precepts of obligation:[5]
At this time there began to appear many popular works in defence of the authority of the Church and setting forth her precepts. Such among others were theSumma Doctrinæ Christianæ (1555) ofPeter Canisius, and theDoctrina Christiana ofBellarmine (1589).[5]
