Copyright © 2006 By Doug Lawrence. All Rights Reserved.
Catechism Of The Catholic Church Reprinted With Permission.
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God’s Truth From The Catechism Of The Catholic Church – cont.
404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in
Adam "as one body of one man".
293
By this "unity of the human race" all men are implicated in
Adam's sin, as all are implicated in Christ's justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery
that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original
holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter,
Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would
then transmit in a fallen state.
294
It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind,
that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is
why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not
"committed" - a state and not an act.
405 Although it is proper to each individual,
295
original sin does not have the character of a
personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but
human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it,
subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil
that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin
and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to
evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
406 The Church's teaching on the transmission of original sin was articulated more precisely in the
fifth century, especially under the impulse of St. Augustine's reflections against Pelagianism, and in
the sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius held that man could, by
the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God's grace, lead a morally good
life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam's fault to bad example. The first Protestant reformers,
on the contrary, taught that original sin has radically perverted man and destroyed his freedom;
they identified the sin inherited by each man with the tendency to evil (concupiscentia), which
would be insurmountable. The Church pronounced on the meaning of the data of Revelation on
original sin especially at the second Council of Orange (529)
296
and at the Council of Trent
(1546).
297
A hard battle. . .
407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid
discernment of man's situation and activity in the world. By our first parents' sin, the devil has
acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails
"captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil".
298
Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in
the areas of education, politics, social action
299
and morals.
408 The consequences of original sin and of all men's personal sins put the world as a whole in
the sinful condition aptly described in St. John's expression, "the sin of the world".
300
This
expression can also refer to the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and
social structures that are the fruit of men's sins.
301
409 This dramatic situation of "the whole world [which] is in the power of the evil one"
302
makes
man's life a battle:
The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil,
stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding
himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at
great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own
inner integrity.
303
IV. "YOU DID NOT ABANDON HIM TO THE POWER OF DEATH"
410 After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God calls him and in a
mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall.
304
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