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Entry: The Addams Family Chapel Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_addams_family_chapel#11045 Post contents: Sid, Paul is right, “there can be no other concept of original sin in the Eastern Churches unless you’re talking about the Orthodox or some other schismatic eastern sect, in which case you cannot consider yourself an orthodox Catholic (as you said)”. You are Orthodox if you choose the Eastern Orthodox view - and that it is the problem. Your “view” is a direct contradiction to the Catholic doctrine, and I don’t need a solemn ex cathedra canonical definition to prove it - it is the constant teaching and understanding of the Church from day one, and we can support that universal, ordinary, common, doctrinal and infallible “view” by citing the fathers, the popes, the Doctors, the Councils and the Saints. Let Pope Pius XI confirm this constant and infallible dogma: Pope Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge, March 14, 1937: “‘Original sin’ is the hereditary but impersonal fault of Adam’s descendants, who have sinned in him (Rom. v. 12). It is the loss of grace, and therefore eternal life, together with a propensity to evil, which everybody must, with the assistance of grace, penance, resistance and moral effort, repress and conquer.” You said, “Original Sin isn’t an inherited trait, but simply is a force, a power that enters the world with Adam’s fall, and ‘infects’ us all.” Who are we going to believe - you - or the Catholic Church? Now, you stated that “Augustine had a text that said ‘in whom all men sin’ (perhaps in quo instead of a more correct quod clause?). He looked at ‘whom’ and looked back in the verse to its antecedent, ‘one man’ (Adam). Thus he developed his ‘inheritance theory’ of Original Sin.” The Council of Trent, again: “By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.” That is a direct word-for-word magisterial rebuttal to your assertion. It’s bad enough that you accuse St. Augustine of some woeful deficiency in translating an ancient text which caused him to commit a huge blunder in understanding the nature and meaning of Original sin; but, apparently, the entire patrimony of the Church is guilty of the same - including our dogmatic Councils! The Council of Trent, again: “this sin of Adam,--which in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propogation…By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men in whom all have sinned, is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church spread everywhere hath always understood it. For, by reason of this rule of faith, from a tradition of the apostles, even infants, who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this cause truly baptized for the remission of sins, that in them that may be cleansed away by regeneration, which they have contracted by generation. For, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Did you catch that Sid: “so death passed upon all men IN WHOM ALL HAVE SINNED, is NOT to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church spread everywhere hath always understood it…that in them that may be cleansed away by regeneration, which they have contracted by generation.” But that is precisely what you are contesting; you are saying that the Catholic Church got it wrong, that one may in fact understand this dogma “otherwise than as the Catholic Church spread everywhere hath always understood it”. And the Church says in rebuttal “Anathema sit!” Honestly Sid, I don’t understand you’re embracing the Orthodox heterodoxy on original sin - have I misunderstand you? I don’t see how - your words are clear enough. Sent at: 2008 10 06