Youcat commented through CCC - Question n. 68 - Part I.

YOUCAT Question n. 68 - Part I. Original sin? What does the Fall of Adam and Eve have to do with us?

(Youcat answer) Sin in the strict sense implies guilt for which one is personally responsible. Therefore the term “Original Sin” refers, not to a personal sin, but rather to the disastrous, fallen state of mankind into which the individual is born, even before he himself sins by a free decision.      

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 386) Sin is present in human history; any attempt to ignore it or to give this dark reality other names would be futile. To try to understand what sin is, one must first recognize the profound relation of man to God, for only in this relationship is the evil of sin unmasked in its true identity as humanity's rejection of God and opposition to him, even as it continues to weigh heavy on human life and history.      

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) In talking about Original Sin, Pope Benedict XVI says that we must understand “that we all carry within us a drop of the poison of that way of thinking, illustrated by the images in the Book of Genesis…  The human being does not trust God. Tempted by the serpent, he harbors the suspicion … that God is a rival who curtails our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we have cast him aside… Man does not want to receive his existence and the fullness of his life from God. … And in doing so, he trusts in deceit rather than in truth and thereby sinks with his life into emptiness, into death” (Pope Benedict XVI, December 8, 2005).

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 387) Only the light of divine Revelation clarifies the reality of sin and particularly of the sin committed at mankind's origins. Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc. Only in the knowledge of God's plan for man can we grasp that sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another.     

(This question: Original sin? What does the Fall of Adam and Eve have to do with us? is continued)