A: It is said at the commencement of the Commandments: I am the Lord thy God, to show us that God being our Creator and Lord, can command whatever He wills, and that we, being His creatures, are bound to obey Him.
A: By the words of the First Commandment: Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me, He commands us to acknowledge, adore, love and serve Him alone as our Sovereign Lord.
A: We fulfill the First Commandment by the practice of internal and external worship.
A: Internal worship is the honor which is given to God with the faculties of the soul alone, that is with the intellect and the will.
A: External worship is the homage that is given to God by means of outward acts and of sensible objects.
A: No, it is not enough internally to adore God with the heart alone; we must also adore Him externally with both soul and body, because He is the Creator and absolute Lord of both.
A: No, in no way can there be external worship without internal, because unless external worship is accompanied by internal, it is destitute of life, of merit, and of efficacy, like a body without a soul
A: The First Commandment forbids idolatry, superstition, sacrilege, heresy, and every other sin against religion.
A: Idolatry is the giving to any creature, for example, to a statue, to an image, or to a man, the supreme worship of adoration that belongs to God alone.
A: This prohibition is expressed in Holy Scripture in these words: Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or on the earth beneath; and thou shalt not adore them or serve them.
A: Certainly not; but only those of false divinities, made to be adored, as idolaters adore them. So true is this, that God Himself commanded Moses to make images, as, for example, the two statues of the Cherubim for the Ark, and the Brazen Serpent in the desert.
A: Superstition is any devotion that is contrary to the teaching and practice of the Church; as also the ascribing to any action or any thing whatever a supernatural virtue which it does not possess.
A: A sacrilege is the profanation of a place, of a person, or of a thing consecrated to God and set apart for his worship.
A: Heresy is a culpable error of the intellect by which some truth of faith is obstinately denied.
A: The First Commandment also forbids all dealings with the devil, and all association with anti-Christian sects.
A: If one were to have recourse to and invoke the devil, he would commit an enormous sin, because the devil is the most wicked enemy both of God and of man.
A: All the practices of spiritism are unlawful, because they are superstitious; and often they are not free from diabolical intervention; and hence they are rightly condemned by the Church.
A: No, it is not forbidden to honor and invoke the Angels and Saints; on the contrary, we should do so, because it is a good and useful practice highly commended by the Church; for they are God's friends and our intercessors with Him.
A: Jesus Christ is our Mediator with God, because being true God and true man He alone in virtue of His own merits has reconciled us to God and obtains us all graces. But in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, and through the charity which unites them to God and us, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints help us by their intercession to obtain the graces we ask. And this is one of the great benefits of the Communion of Saints.
A: Yes, because the honor we give the sacred images of Jesus Christ and of the Saints is referred to their very persons.
A: Yes, we should honor the relics of the Saints, because their bodies were living members of Jesus Christ and temples of the Holy Ghost, and will rise gloriously to eternal life.
A: Between the honor we give to God and the honor we give to the Saints there is this difference, that we adore God because of his infinite excellence, whereas we do not adore the Saints, but honor and venerate them as God's friends and our intercessors with Him. The honor we give to God is called Latria, that is, the worship of adoration; the honor we give to the Saints is called Dulia, that is, the veneration of the servants of God; while the special honor we give to the Blessed Virgin is called Hyperdulia, that is, a special veneration of the Mother of God.