Ballots this November will offer Alabama a chance to authorize the display of the Ten Commandments on public property.

Here are two quick thoughts on the issue:

The Ten Commandments are important, and we are bound to keep them.

“In fidelity to Scripture and in conformity with the example of Jesus, the tradition of the Church has acknowledged the primordial importance and significance of the Decalogue [Ten Commandments],” reads the Catechism of The Catholic Church in paragraph 2064.

In paragraph 2068, the Catechism expresses that “the Ten Commandments are obligatory for Christians and that the justified man is bound to keep them,” saying further, in paragraph 2072, “since they express man’s fundamental duties towards God and towards his neighbor, the Ten Commandments reveal, in their primordial content, grave obligations. They are fundamentally immutable, and they oblige always and everywhere.”

Most of Alabama’s Christians are not Catholic but almost certainly, most of them share these convictions of the Ten Commandments’ importance.

The commandments’ importance does not imply that putting them on display is morally necessary, or that it will effectuate anything.

Dean Young, the Roy Moore ally leading the rally to get the amendment passed, thinks that putting up the commandments will catalyze some kind of societal shift, a new-found devotion to God.

“We’ve seen what’s happened when we remove God from our society systematically,” Young said in a recent video on his Facebook page.

Young cites the degradation of American culture, which is very much attributable to the secularization of our age, but there is no reason to believe that erecting the Ten Commandments anywhere in public space will effectuate the moral revolution that conservatives desire.

Cultural renewal is much needed, but the fruit will have to come to bear through the work of religious institutions and families, not through monuments put in place by government.

@jeremywbeaman is a contributing writer for Yellowhammer News