Commandments of the Church

In the Roman Catholic Church, the Commandments of the Church or Precepts 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 often said to be six, or sometimes five; the enumeration depends on the catechism cited. These specifically Catholic commandments are additional to the Ten Commandments which are common to all the Abrahamic religions.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its Compendium, enumerates the following five: 1.You shall attend Mass on Sundays and on holy days of obligation. 2.You shall confess your sins at least once a year. 3.You shall receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least once during the Easter season. 4.You shall observe the days of fasting and abstinence established by the Church. 5.You shall help to provide for the needs of the Church.

The fourth Church Commandment is commonly remembered as abstinence from meat (but not fish) on Fridays (except solemnities), and abstinence plus restriction to one meal only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The details are quite various, including some countries to allow for a different way of penance on at least ordinary Fridays. The whole of Lent is of penitential character, though no specified practice is required.

The most obvious reason for the Church commandments is Church authority, which has a right to be obeyed as delegated by Our Lord, which common tradition subsumes under the Fourth Commandment. The first Church Commandment is obviously an explanation of the minimum requirements for hallowing the Lord's Day, with the specification that it is Mass, and not anything else, that needs to be heard, that the Lord's Day has been shifted from Saturday to Sunday, and that some other feasts are assigned by Church authority in remembrance of Our Lord, of His blessed Mother and of the Saints. The third Church Commandment is a specification to Our Lord's directive to eat His Flesh, reducible to the Third Commandment as well since it is an act of devotion. The second Church Commandment prescribes a preparation for fulfilling the third Church Commandment and was promulgated at the Fourth Council of the Lateran. What concerns the fourth Church Commandment, the Church believes that penance is of divine law, and the notion is general that fasting, as a penitential practise, is quite useful, citing such Scripture as "Be converted to Me with all your heart, in fasting". Thus again, the commanding act of the Church rather consists in the precisation. The necessity of providing for the needs of the Church results from the faithful belonging to one Mystical Body and is regulated in canons 1260 and 1262.

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