YOUCAT Question n. 68 - Part III. Original sin? What does the Fall of Adam and Eve have to do with us?
(Youcat
answer - repeated) 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 390)
The account of the fall in Genesis 3
uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man
(Cf. GS 13 § 1). Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of
human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first
parents (Cf. Council of Trent: DS 1513; Pius XII: DS 3897; Paul VI: AAS 58
(1966), 654).
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 418)
As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to
ignorance, suffering and the domination of death, and inclined to sin. (This
inclination is called "concupiscence"). (CCC 420) The victory that
Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had
taken from us: "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more"
(Rom 5:20).
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