E
egnubo
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If you have some time, look up the audience of Pope John Paul II November 5, 1986. He deal with this very topic. I copy below his analysis after noting the differences in the way the matter is treated in Scriptures and in the Liturgy. Enjoy. I have highlighted the pertinent sentence in the paragrapy
How are we to understand these expressions about the “sin of the world”? The passages quoted clearly indicate that here it is not a case of the “world” as a creation of God, but as a specific dimension, almost a spiritual space closed to God, in which evil arises on the basis of created freedom. This evil transferred into the “heart” of our first parents under the influence of the “ancient serpent” (cf. Gen 3 and Rev 12:9), that is, Satan, “the father of lies,” has borne evil fruits from the beginning of human history. Original sin has left in its wake that “spark or incitement of evil desire,” that is, the threefold concupiscence, which induces people to sin. In their turn the many personal sins that are committed form a kind of “environment of sin.” This creates the conditions for new personal sins and in a certain way induces and attracts individuals to sin. **Therefore “the sin of the world” is not to be identified with original sin, but it is, as it were, a synthesis or summing up of the consequences of original sin in the history of each generation and so in the whole history of humanity. **From this it also follows that the various human initiatives, tendencies, achievements and institutions, even in those “ensembles” which constitute cultures and civilizations, bear a certain imprint of sin. In this sense one can perhaps speak of a sin of the structures as a kind of “infection” which is spread from human hearts into the environments in which they live and into the structures which support and condition their existence.
How are we to understand these expressions about the “sin of the world”? The passages quoted clearly indicate that here it is not a case of the “world” as a creation of God, but as a specific dimension, almost a spiritual space closed to God, in which evil arises on the basis of created freedom. This evil transferred into the “heart” of our first parents under the influence of the “ancient serpent” (cf. Gen 3 and Rev 12:9), that is, Satan, “the father of lies,” has borne evil fruits from the beginning of human history. Original sin has left in its wake that “spark or incitement of evil desire,” that is, the threefold concupiscence, which induces people to sin. In their turn the many personal sins that are committed form a kind of “environment of sin.” This creates the conditions for new personal sins and in a certain way induces and attracts individuals to sin. **Therefore “the sin of the world” is not to be identified with original sin, but it is, as it were, a synthesis or summing up of the consequences of original sin in the history of each generation and so in the whole history of humanity. **From this it also follows that the various human initiatives, tendencies, achievements and institutions, even in those “ensembles” which constitute cultures and civilizations, bear a certain imprint of sin. In this sense one can perhaps speak of a sin of the structures as a kind of “infection” which is spread from human hearts into the environments in which they live and into the structures which support and condition their existence.
