Original Sin, Preternatural Gifts, East vs West

[Kmon23]

I’ve been looking up original sin and how they differ between the East and West. I’ve been tying this with whether the Virgin Mary would have had a painless birth or not while considering that she had no sin.

So my questions are…

Are the preternatural gifts, added/extra qualities of man before the fall so that the fall let man lose these qualities and hence death… or is it part of the intrinsic image/being of man and so losing these gifts leave man lacking in his being, and so death comes from that through the fall.
So the first details man was created, and the gifts and sanctifying grace was put into/onto man. The second details man was created and the gifts and sanctifying grace was intrinsically part of man. It’s sort of how (if I recall correctly) the church defined original sin as the lack of sanctifying grace (while the Virgin Mary certainly had grace with the Immaculate Conception), however the East see the Immaculate Conception as unnecessary because Mary wasn’t lacking anything due to their view of ancestral sin?
I ask this because the Blessed Virgin Mary still aged and died (with her bodily assumption occurring of course). I understand a common response is that it was to better conform with her Son’s death on the cross, however I am trying to find a theological explanation outside of just conforming and more based on ideas of Immaculate Conception and Assumption. Based on the details mentioned, I am leaning towards the former (gifts are extra/added qualities of man) because if true, then Mary could be a perfect human being (without original sin) and may still age and die because the preternatural gifts are extras laid on top of man’s being which wasn’t given to Mary. Similar with Jesus, He experienced pain and death although He was perfect, because even though perfection as a human, He was not given the preternatural gifts (and because He was mean’t to die for us).

This is based on the former question, but based on Revelation 12, it says the Women had pain. I know this is up to much interpretation, especially being an apocalyptic genre, but just simply if this describes Mary having pain in child birth, then does the former explanation in question 1 explain this? Preternatural gifts include no pain, but because preternatural gifts are extra on top of man, Mary was without original sin but can still feel pain from childbirth because lack of original sin does not guarantee the preternatural gifts (and presence of original sin guarantees lack of preternatural gifts). And how does this fit in with Isaiah 66:7?

TL;DR, then…

1. God created man, and preternatural gifts are bestowed upon the complete and already perfect creation of man. This explains why Mary could still age and feel pain (such as childbirth) because although lacking original sin, she was not bestowed these preternatural gifts. And this is because preternatural gifts are not intrinsic to being of man, so to not have original sin does not guarantee the preternatural gifts. Is this in line with Catholic teaching, or is this view somehow incorrect?

 

[KindredSoul]

It seems that one thing to consider is that Mary’s being unstained by Original Sin was due to her being redeemed at the moment of conception by the Grace her Son would one day win for us on the Cross. But as I understand Church teaching, her redemption, in kind, is the same as ours, despite being specially granted to her so that she never suffered sin. She was also spared concupiscence, of course, because concupiscence (the tendency to sin) is a result of an individual having HAD original sin at some point in existence (as all but Mary and Jesus have), sort of like a “scar” from it.

But as for the other temporal consequences of original sin, such as death and pain, these are more so due to universal effects original sin had on the world, and so they have far less to do with individual people’s original sin. For instance, all of Creation, thanks to Adam’s sin, “is now subject to ‘its bondage to decay’” according to the Catechism, and obviously animals and the universe itself do not have the “stain of original sin” as we do. But, because there is an intimate link between all human beings and between human beings and all creation, these other parts of creation were affected by the sin, despite bearing none of it within themselves directly. So too, I would argue, is any physical body born into this world. Mary’s body therefore need be no exception. Even though she personally never had the stain of original sin, her physical body would suffer the effects of it, such as pain and aging, just as the universe itself–despite obviously being unable to “inherit” original sin from Adam–has been affected by it.

Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul

 

[opusAquinas]

Find for sure what preternatural gifts are.