Well, we've come to the end of a couple of weeks when we've been reflecting very

simply and briefly on the Ten Commandments.

And number ten is this, you shall not covet.

We covet when we're not content with what we have and want to have what belongs to someone

else.

I'll come to what I think is one of the most interesting things about this commandment in a

moment, but since we're at the end of these two weeks when we've been focusing on the Decalogue,

I want to make this observation.

It's not blindingly original.

We all recognise that as life becomes more complex, the principles or laws we use to regulate

it are important.

And they're bound to increase in number.

If nobody had put anything up in space or ever went there, then we wouldn't need any space

law.

If there were no computers, no World Wide Web, no social media, we wouldn't need laws to regulate them.

But they do exist, and we all understand that we need to agree how to handle them.

But here's an important observation.

God gave us 10 basic laws to govern our lives.

Yes, we need to learn how to apply them, and as we've hinted, the wonderful catechisms of the church do a masterful job in helping us do that.

But when these 10 big laws are ignored, demeaned or rejected, as is often happening in our society today,

when a society overthrows what I sometimes call the big 10, something else inevitably happens.

Our governments have to start introducing more and more and more laws to try to cope with

...