Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   Most christian churches like only 9 of the commandments. The second one
> > (about not doing images of God or anything else) they don't like too much,

> I think here's an excellent distinction between catholic and the rest of 
> christianity.  You can immediately tell a catholic church from a protestant 
> church, as the catholic will have jesus on the cross and a protestant church 
> won't.  There are very few images of jesus in a typical protestant church, 
> no saints being worshiped instead of god, no "mother mary" stuff, etc.

  Actually most protestant churches don't like the God image prohibition
either, so they have it the same as catholics. For example the so-called
"10 commandments" in the Lutheran church are the same as in catholicism
(iow. the actual second commandment is skipped and the last commandment
is split into two). Luther himself argued why this is ok (but IIRC didn't
explain why is it also ok to make two commandments out of the last one).

  Curiously this is even so for more liberal denominations such as the
pentecostal church and many others, at least here. I don't know how it
is with the big churches on the other side of the Atlantic, eg. with
baptists.

  (Many people argue that the commandments are not actually numbered, and
only vagely referred to as "the ten" much later, so there's no telling
exactly which number goes to what. It still doesn't justify skipping the
image prohibition, though, as it is right there after the first commandment.)

  Some christian denominations (many of who also strongly oppose catholicism)
stress on the importance of not skipping such a commandment and hence maintain
it as the true second commandment.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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