How do Catholics explain original sin?

[Masihi]

There are numerous verses in the Old Testament such as Deuteronomy and Ezekiel which say we are not responsible nor guilty for Adams sin and are held accountable for our own actions just as the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of Ancestral Sin explains it. So how does the Catholic Church reconcile with this?

 

[straykat]

I’d love to know myself… because the Orthodox (or is it appropriately the “Athanasius” teaching?) makes a lot of sense, and teaches a lot about the nature of not just sin, but death. I wonder if Eastern Catholics lean on it more than Augustine.

 

[Masihi]

Since we believe each person will be held accountable and punished for his own sin there is no contradictory teaching however with the Catholic Church which teaches that we inherit guilt and are responsible for the crimes of Adam and Eve in some way I just cannot seem to understand.

 

[otrrl]

Here’s a link to the Catechism of the Catholic
church that may help

http://ccc.usccb.org/flipbooks/catechism/index.html#98/z

recall the song from Handel’s Messiah that goes something like this “As in Adam all died, even so in Christ have all been made alive.” (I don’t have the scripture reference for that)

The Bible teaches with stories (like Adam and Eve) rather than explaining things in a systematic way (which is what the catechism is for). So, you can see all the consequences of sin for Adam and Eve which we “inherit” – we must work by the sweat of our brow and women have pain in childbirth, etc. including physical death.

 

[Masihi]

I believe in contracted sin too but it still doesn’t explain why the Catholic Church also believes in contracted guilt.

 

[Gorgias]

There are numerous verses in the Old Testament such as Deuteronomy and Ezekiel which say we are not responsible nor guilty for Adams sin

We aren’t. We don’t pay the price for Adam’s sin, in his place.

and are held accountable for our own actions

Yes, we are.

So how does the Catholic Church reconcile with this?

Reconcile what, exactly?

the Catholic Church which teaches that we inherit guilt and are responsible for the crimes of Adam and Eve in some way I just cannot seem to understand.

No, we’re not “held responsible.” Rather, in much the same way that we inherit human nature from our parents (and their parents, and their parents, etc, etc), we inherit the wounded human nature that resulted from the first sin of our first parents.

it still doesn’t explain why the Catholic Church also believes in contracted guilt.

It’s not that we contract the guilt of Adam. We inherit, through propagation, the fallen human nature that our first parents caused to enter the world.

 

[fhansen]

The CC teaches that Adam’s descendants contract a state, not an act. We’re not accountable for Adam’s sin but were nevertheless changed and affected by it. The change has been referred to as the “death of the soul”, a death that calls for a rebirth, a reawakening, a raising from the dead. Its chief characteristic is separation from God. We’ve lost the “knowledge of God”, the direct, personal, knowledge of Him, from birth. Jesus came to reconcile this situation, as the time became ripe in human history. “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” John 17:3

By everything He said and did Jesus came to reveal the Father so that we may know Him, in order to believe in and ultimately love Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. So that we may commune with Him as is the right and just order of things for man. This is what Adam failed to do, and this is what humans are still called to do with the help of time spent here in this very non-Edenic world, effectively separated from God where we can begin to develop a hunger and thirst for Him with the help of revelation and grace, and so turn back to Him like Prodigals back to their father. This is how we’re “born again” or “born from above”. This is how we’re justified, the chief effects of original sin overcome in us.

 

[Bre6785]

The way I heard it explained, is more like, we being children of the original humans on earth, would have inherited all that our parents were promised in the beginning. However, they forfeited this, our inheritance, when they sinned. To bring us back into this inheritance (Gods children), we have baptism (circumcision).