Explicitly condemned are acts of lust, fornication, rape, pornography, prostitituion, masturbation, homosexuality, adultery, incest, polygamy and divorce.

Could you give me the KJV of the sixth and ninth commandments? I can't see where many of these are "explicitly" condemend. (Note: I'm not argueing that they aren't, I just want to know where your info comes from - hey, you never know, I might convert to catholocism - and I am being serious)

Is there a difference between adultry and fornication? Just wondering because my MW dictionary defines them synonymously.

Chapter 6 tells us of sins that exclude from the kingdom of heaven and especially of the evil of fornication. My Douay Rheims has 1Cor.6:9-10 as "Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, 10 nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor theives, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of GOd."

MY NAB has it "Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of GOd? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites nor theives nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of GOd."

Masturbation is against the practice of purity and the virtue of chastity. The positive part of the precept of the 6th and 9th Commandments and of St.Paul's exhortation is for the faithful to be taught to earnestly cultivate chastity with all care, to cleanse themselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear (love)of GOd. 2Cor.8:1

The Catechism of the CC also includes "every species of immodesty and impurity" in the prohibition of adultery as per the 6th Commandment in the OT and in 1Cor.6:9-10 in the NT.

I think a good rule of thumb when asking questions that have to do with sexual morality is to ask what would God have me do according to the gold standards He has given us in the Ten Commandments. Remember that everything that He has given us is for our Good.

Catholicism teaches that we are to only use the natural sex act within marriage and intercourse is to be always open to life. No exceptions. It is a sin for Catholics to use artificial birth control or contraception. Why? Because that compromises the basic principle that our sexual facilities are to be used only in a way that is designed and planned by God. We become idolaters and love ourselves saying we no longer accept the inherent moral goodness of procreation within marriage.

Everyone, no matter what his station in life or age, who is not married, must practice chastity.

Women who pass into their menopausal years can have all the sexual intercourse they want as long as it's with their lawful husband. This is a continuation of God's plan for us as we are not separating the life dimension during marital sexual intercourse. God has done that by the natural law. Very wonderful indeed.

Yes, we have freedom in Christ. But as Christians we don't take advantage of that either. In other words we don't say, well since I'm saved and in Christ I'm free to commit sin at will.

The believer who has died with Christ is released from bondage to the law and is free to experience the abundant life of Christ. The law arouses sin in me. The book of Romans would be a good read on all this. When Paul came to understand the true meaning of the law, he realized that he was a sinner and worthy of death. The law is fundamentally good but the result of the law is to bring into the open the power of sin. The law exposes our sin. The law was like a mirror. We could see how dirty we were when we held it up, but it couldn't cleanse us. We needed to move away from that mirror to be cleansed. When Christ came, he cleansed us once and for all.

Our past, present and future sins were nailed to the cross and we were cleansed by the blood of the lamb. When Jesus washed the disciples feet he said "he that is bathed need not wash except to wash his feet, but is clean every bit and you are clean, but not all (Judas)." We are already washed and clean and need only to come to him to wash our feet because we walk in a sinful world and it's hard not to get our feet dirty.

Yes, but and this is a big but.....we must not overlook the very next verse that says:

"And such were some of you: but you were washed, you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the of the Lord Jesus........"

We all sin. We all make mistakes. This section was a warning against moral laxity. Paul did not want Christianity confused with the sects that permitted such things. People whose lifestyles exhibit the fruit of wickedness show they are unsaved and will not inherit the kingdom of God. Those who walk away from it are cleansed and therefore will inherit the kingdom of God.

Later Paul says "all things are lawful" (v12) Apparently some of the Corinthians were trying to use their Christian freedom to justify their sins. Paul here is insisting that Christian liberty is limited by two considerations; Is the practice helpful and will it enslave?

The Corinthians were a mess. They were taking advantage of their freedom in Christ. They were celebrating a bit too much in their freedom from the OT law. Yes we're set free but not free to sin at will. We are set free and should be walking away from those sins that will hold us down.

Chapter 6 tells us of sins that exclude from the kingdom of heaven and especially of the evil of fornication. My Douay Rheims has 1Cor.6:9-10 as

Iulapilgrim, it would help me a great deal if you would incorporate these additional materials when helping to aswer my question. Otherwise, in my unlearned state I'm likely to get lost in your teaching. (ex. explicitness of Ten Commandments)

Even if you don't think of it until later, please post. It will still help me to learn.

Thank you for bearing with me. I appreciate all that you feed me and am very hungry

One of the first things one has to inderstand about the 10 Commandments is that they were not 10 suggestions. They are God's divine will. It is important to understand them in light of the OT in which they were given and then in the NT and how our Lord lived and taught the Commandments setting an example of total surrender to the Divine Will. For Jesus as a man it was always first about His Heavenly Fahter's will. I know there are popular arguments that Jesus supposedly repudiated the Ten when He established His new law of love. This isn't so. Christ lived the Ten in the highest degree possible and we who wish and claim to follow Him must remember that Christian sanctity is only possible when we follow the example of Jesus in living the Commandments.

The Sixth Commandment of Almighty God is "thou shalt not commit adultery". Adultery like fornication is a sin against chastity. Adultery is a defilement of one's own or another's marriage bed. Fornicaton is the sexual act between unmarried persons.

One of the best explanations of the Ten Commandments comes from Father Hardon, a priest who died about 5 years ago. He said of the Sixth Commandment, "that Christ elevated the original Commandment given to Moses to heights that the Jews could scarcely comprehend. Not only does it forbid adultery, externally, but every type of impure thought or action. The new Lawgiver now demanded a response immeasurably higher: the internal mastery of passions. Fr.Hardon informs that Jesus identified adultery as a sin agasint charity and thereby changed the whole focus of the virtue which the Sixth and Ninth Commandments had previously identified.

Now it was no longer a question of justice, of keeping one's hand, so to speak, off an other and not to covet; but Jesus relates the Sixth and the Ninth to the practice of charity. The Christian understanding of chastity is the virtue of charity, in which the object of the virtue is really a form of self-sacrifice. This needs saying: Unless Christians practice total internal chastity, they will lose Christ and His grace.

As Catholic tradition was to gradually unfold, the meaning of chastity evolved to a form of temperance with regard to sexual pleasure. A chaste person, by Christians standards, is one who tempers, controls and restrains his desires for sexual pleasure by not having the experience except within the Divinely ordained Sacrament of marriage--within these bounds it is a sacred enjoyment that God has divinely associated with the responsibility of Christian marriage.

Absolutely, KFC. I should have quoted the entire passage (as it is very relevant to much that is going on in the world today. Corinth was a mess and we are too). In this list of sins similiar to those given in 1Cor.5:10-11, St.Paul explicitly teaches that those who commit these sins will not get to Heaven, that is will not gain eternal salvation. There's no mincing of words. The whole list is a kind of explanation of what "unrighteousness" means. Not only those who go against righteousness who wrongly go to law or defraud others, righteousness, justice, in the language of the BIble, is equivalent to holiness and therefore is opposed to every kind of sin.

We can certainly relate St.Paul's admonition, "Do not be deceived" to situations in our day and time. He is saying that the Corinthians are not to make out such actions as "good" and that is as bad as to commit them. In Corinth and other places, there were false ideologies which interpret sinfulness as virtue.

So, yes, we have free will and God's map to real freedom is following the Ten Commandments. Like Christ, we can't render God's Commandments null or be comprimising with evil and evil doers. When you think about it, this is what abounds nowadays. Free will is denied by dominant psychology or ideology and we are told that we're victims of circumstance, birth, and our choices in life are determined by our disfunctional families, taumatic childhoods, and a big one--patriarchial structures, economic injustice, etc, etc.

To get back on point, humans possess free will and have the ability to determine our thoughts and actions and we are ultimately responsible for those and will be held accountable for those before the Judge.