What is the Catholic Church's explanation of its listing of the Ten Commandments? From Decalogue in Exodus 20:2-17 (RSVCE) and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 (RSVCE) has the the Catholic Church explained in her history and Tradition how she settled on this list of the Ten Commandments?



One accusation against the Church is that they can then get away with making graven images.
There is no official Catholic division of Ten commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:


  The division and numbering of the Commandments have varied in the course of history. The present catechism follows the division of the Commandments established by St. Augustine, which has become traditional in the Catholic Church. It is also that of the Lutheran confessions. The Greek Fathers worked out a slightly different division, which is found in the Orthodox Churches and Reformed communities. (CCC 2066)


The Catechism states that it uses the Augustinian grouping because it is traditional and it rhymes easily which makes it easy to memorize. (CCC 2065) Catholics thus have liberty of conscience in determining which division of the Decalogue they believe best. That is there is no correct way to group the ten commandments.

Catechism also argues that The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) forms a coherent whole. Each "commandments" refers to each of the others and to all of them; they reciprocally condition one another. To transgress one commandment is to infringe all the others. (CCC 2069) So, grouping of the commandments does not matter as long as all 10 are held together.

The main two differences in the division of the Ten commandments are:


Grouping of commandment against other gods and idols:

Idols are only of interest to God insofar as they are false gods. God has no problem with statues in general, or even religious statues. It is only because they are considered to be gods that the Lord is interested in them as this violates his territory. God himself has commanded Israelite to build statues (Exo 25:18). If God had problem with Idols Per se, then how can God ask them to violate his own commandment?

By dividing the no false gods and no idols as two commandments like:

Commandment 1: You shall have no other gods before me.

Commandment 2: You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. [emphasis added]

The latter would be almost eight times as long as the former; Commandment 1 is 5 words long in Hebrew, while the next is 39 words long. Please note that the italicized part of Commandment 2 makes no sense if it is for making idols alone. As God has no reason to be jealous of an idol if it is NOT worshiped as a god equal to Him (which is the Commandment 1).
Coveting a neighbor's wife and desiring his property be grouped together or not? 

The Deuteronomy 5 version of the  Ten commandments uses different verbs for these commandments. It says one must not "covet" your neighbor's spouse, but that one must not "desire" a neighbor's property. Two separate verbs, thus reasonably considered as two separate commandments.




See: The Division of the Ten Commandments by James Akin