Chapter 26 — Part III — The Ten Commandments
Section 593. Q. What particular sins are forbidden thereby? A. The chief are-- 1. Robbery, or the taking of any thing that belongs to another openly, by force. 2. Theft, or taking what belongs to another privily. 3. Fraud, or appropriating to ourselves any thing that is another's by artifice; as when men pass off counterfeit money for true, or bad wares for good; or use false weights and measures, to give less than they have sold; or conceal their effects to avoid paying their debts; or do not honestly fulfill contracts, or execute wills; when they screen others guilty of dishonesty, and so defraud the injured of justice. 4. Sacrilege, or appropriating to ourselves what has been dedicated to God, or belongs to the Church. 5. Spiritual sacrilege;3 when one sinfully gives and another fraudulently obtains any sacred office, not of desert, but for gain. 6. Bribery; when men receive a bribe from those under them in office or jurisdiction, and for gain promote the unworthy, acquit the guilty, or oppress the innocent. 7. Eating the bread of idleness; when men receive salary for duty, or pay for work, which they neglect, and so in fact steal both their pay and that profit which society, or he whom they served, should have had of their labor; in like manner when they who are able to support themselves by work, instead of so doing live upon alms. 8. Extortion; when, under the show of some right, but really against equity and humanity, men make their own advantage of the property, the labors, or even the misfortunes of others; as when creditors oppress their debtors by usury; when masters wear out their dependents by excessive imposts or tasks; when in time of famine men sell bread at an exorbitant price.