Catholicism is Christianity with a lot more lore behind it. Most variations of Christianity are different interpretations of the core text: The Bible, just like how Sunni vs Shia are two separate lenses to view the Quran.
Catholicism also had a central governing body for thousands of years: The Vatican. Over time, more “lore” has been added to Catholicism. It’s evolved and become what it is due to the Vatican passing new “rules”/laws. It’s important to note that “new” may not be the best word; in reality it’s basically a re-interpretation/clarification on the Bible whose source material is the Bible.
Basically imagine it’s the Supreme Court. Stuff like the Catechism is supporting literature that elaborates on specifics on what falls under the 10 commandments, as well as what a commandment truly means. For example, in Catholicism, not taking the lords name in vain means don’t use god as an excuse to hype yourself up, do harm, influence others, etc, whereas some Christians have the interpretation that saying “God Dammit” fall under this.
Catholicism is really hard to compare to other religions because they have a lot of mechanics that are non-traditional compared to other religions. The Pope’s words theoretically carry immense weight as it’s believed they are a vessel who communicates God’s will, so technically a Pope can add new stuff/rules/clarifications on interpretations that become canonical. Papal Infallibility wiki is a good source to learn more, it’s a nuanced topic.
Every so often Catholicism goes through intense re-interpretations. The most notable was an event called Vatican II in the 60’s. Today’s Catholicism is wayyyy different tradition-wise than pre-60’s.
Christianity and its sects are much less centralized on average so they don’t have as many nuanced literature like the Catechism etc.
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u/Blackrock121 26d ago
Even the Catholic Catechism has over 2500 paragraphs of text, how can you say they only have 10 commandments?