You Need to Know: Continuing in our review of the Commandments, the Second Commandment also refers specifically to God: “You shall not take the name of the Lord our God in vain.”  Thus, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states (section 2145), “The Second Commandment prescribes respect for the Lord’s name.”  It flows then directly from the First Commandment.  As noted by the Archdiocese of the St. Paul & Minneapolis, the Second Commandment “...trains us to know and to preserve the difference between the Creator and the creature.  Respect for God’s name keeps us from reducing Him to a mere fact, or even a thing that we can control or manipulate.”  God’s name is unique, as CCC section 2143 states, and He “confides His name to those who believe in Him.”  Because God’s name is holy it must not be abused.  Section 2146 expands this not only for God’s name but also Jesus Christ, Our Blessed Mother Mary, and all of the saints.  Promises made in God’s name must be kept, otherwise they become abuses and sinful in nature.

   Blasphemy is the best-known offense against the Second Commandment (and was the grounds for Jesus’s Crucifixion).  Section 2148 CCC describes it as “uttering against God– inwardly or outwardly– words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill of God; in failing in respect toward Him in one’s speech; in misusing God’s name.”  Expanding upon this sin, the  CCC says it’s
blasphemous “to make use of God’s mane to cover up criminal practices, to reduce peoples to   servitude, to torture persons or put them to death.”

   Oaths misusing God’s name without blasphemous intention nevertheless constitute an offense against God.  Therefore, taking false oaths is forbidden.  As   section 2150 reminds, “Taking an oath or swearing is to take God as witness to what one affirms.  It is to invoke the divine truthfulness as a pledge of one’s own truthfulness,”  “A false oath calls on God to be witness to a lie,” section 2151 adds.

   Perjury, another offense against the Second Commandment (as well as the Eighth), occurs when a promise under oath is made with no intention of keeping it or when under oath it is not kept.  It is “a grave lack of respect for the Lord of all speech,” section 2152.  Oaths are allowed for “grave and right reasons” (section 2154), but again as they invoke God’s name, they can only be taken in truth, judgement, and justice.
 
To be continued next week!
 

Fr. B