SIXTH COMMANDMENT: YOU SHOULD NOT COMMIT IMPURE ACTS

VI. Do not commit unclean acts

In the Bible we read as the sixth commandment: “You shall not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20.14; Deuteronomy 5.18) However, the Bible lists many other sins of the flesh (Leviticus 20.12-22; Mark 7.20-23; 1 Corinthians 6.9-10.18; Galatians 5.19-21; Ephesians 5,5; 1 Thessalonians 4,3-8), and the Catholic Church had to take this into account. In marriage, sexuality finds its fruitfulness and its natural meaning. But out of wedlock, sexual acts are out of place and objectively sinful. These cause an injury to the very dignity of marriage, in which sexuality has its own context, and therefore in a figurative sense they are adultery. Therefore the Catholic Church has as its sixth commandment: “Do not commit unclean acts”, which includes all sins of the flesh, including that of adultery.

Mortal sin – that by which the guilty separates himself from God, making himself unable to attain eternal life – is such only if the following three conditions are met at the same time:
1) Grave matter, specified by the Ten Commandments.
2) Full awareness of what is being done at that moment.
3) Deliberate consent of the will.
If the three conditions mentioned are not fulfilled at the same time, one does not commit a mortal sin, but a venial one.

Sins against the sixth commandment are all sexual acts contrary to the natural order established by God: pedophilia, rape, bestiality, incest, necrophilia, practiced homosexuality, sodomy, adultery, polygamy, orgies, prostitution, fornication, participation or viewing of pornography in general, autoeroticism or masturbation (i.e. the voluntary arousal of the genital organs, in order to derive venereal pleasure), unclean thoughts to which we consent.