The Catechism of the Catholic Church begins the section which contains, among other things, the Church’s moral teaching by quoting Pope St. Leo the Great writing in the middle of the 5th century: “Christian, recognize your dignity.... Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member….” (1691).

Pope St. Leo, like the Church herself throughout the ages, is providing a subtle, yet profound rationale for why she teaches what she does regarding the moral life.

If we are to share in the life God offers us, we must strive to live our lives as He intended — in keeping with whom He made us to be. In fact, this same basic understanding of the moral life predates Christianity by many, many centuries. We can really see the same rationale at work, as when God gave the Ten Commandments.

These are the things which spell out the absolute most basic foundation for our living lives in keeping with the incredible dignity which comes from being made in God’s image and likeness. If we want to live as God’s people, this is what it will look like.

To disregard the Commandments or to not live them, is to live in a manner beneath or apart from human dignity — ultimately, to choose against ourselves and our truest God-given identity.

The Church has always revered the Ten Commandments and held them up as both instrumental and instructional for what it means to live a truly human life. Even after so many millennia, they still form the basic foundation of the moral life that all human beings are called to live.

For this reason, the catechism itself uses them as the starting point for all of the Church’s moral instruction found there. They are every bit as relevant for us living in 2017 as they were when Moses first delivered them. In fact, every moral teaching that the Church offers flows from one or more of the Commandments, since they provide us with the basic values and principles which are to be reflected in our moral choices.

We believe that those values and principles can be known to some degree through the use of human reason since they are simply a part of the moral law already written by God within our hearts. Nevertheless, they also form a very clear part of God’s revelation to His people.

They are the ten precepts that God has specifically spoken to all humanity. For this reason, they are often referred to as the “Decalogue” (Greek for the “10 Words’).

It is often noted that they lay out the basic precepts of what “love of God and love of neighbor” must look like — the first three dealing with what love of God must entail, and the last seven dealing with what proper love of neighbor must include. Hence they are also seen as basic principles of love. To violate them is not just to break a rule, but to fail to show proper love.

This is also important to note since there are times when some might claim “love” as a rationale for making choices which violate a moral teaching. We can be sure though that any such claim, however sincere, is seriously misguided. No one can fulfill God’s command to love by breaking a commandment, however slight or great the breech may be.

As useful and necessary as they continue to be for us, clearly they do not answer every specific question that we as humans might have regarding our moral choices (especially living in our rapidly changing world). And this is where the Church’s Magisterium fulfills its role for the members of Christ’s Body, the Church. It is tasked with the often difficult role of applying the centuries and centuries of Christian witness, teaching, reflection and insight to the modern questions that arise.

But in every case she finds the origin of her teaching in the 10 words spoken by the source and origin of our human dignity.