Your Questions answered
How can I explain original sin?
Do you have questions about our faith? Send them to: editor@scross.co.za Subject line: Q&A
Q. My son has left the Church but still likes to argue about various teachings. One argument regarded the teaching of “original sin”. He challenged me to explain why people born innocently as babies can be held responsible for something other people did thousands of years ago. I couldn’t. What should I have said?
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OUR SON IS NOT THE FIRST person to misunderstand the concept of original sin. In 2018, Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, created a furore when he called God “stupid” because of original sin — for allowing others, he said, to be stained by something in which they were not involved. The key, of course, is that we are not really “stained” by the sin of our first parents; instead we are simply deprived of what would otherwise have been ours — namely, the absence of suffering and death. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it well. It says that “original sin is called ‘sin’ only in an analogical sense: it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’ — a state and not an act” (404).
Illuminated parchment from Spain made around 950 AD depicting the Fall of Man, the cause of original sin.
Further, the Catechism explains, “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. [...] Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and
Q. In the “Your Questions Answered” column on private revelations (May 2022), you referred to Vassula Rydén’s visions being rejected by the Vatican in 1995. On what grounds were they rejected?
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ASSULA RYDÉN IS A RATHER controversial Egyptian-born Greek Orthodox mystic who is particular popular in some Catholic circles, also in South Africa, which she has visited. She claims to have received messages from Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The two main themes of these messages, and the books she has written about them, are repentance and Church unity. In 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the later Pope Benedict XVI) determined that Rydén’s claimed revelations should not be considered supernatural. Bishops were asked to prevent the
The Southern Cross
spread of Rydén’s propositions in their dioceses. This was confirmed in 2007 by the CDF, which said it was “inappropriate for Catholics to take part in prayer groups” organised by Rydén. The Greek Orthodox Church has also instructed its faithful to disassociate from Rydén, with the Orthodox Church of Cyprus even judging her a heretic. Her popularity persisted regardless. What is the Catholic Church’s problem with her? The CDF in 1995 noted several doctrinal errors, and regarded the nature in which the alleged revelations occurred as “suspect”. It concluded that “the alleged heavenly messages are merely the result of private meditations”. One of the problems the CDF raised concerned the misrepresentations of the Church’s teachings of the Holy Trinity. Rydén’s subsequent clarifications did not persuade the CDF.
Vassula Rydén in 2013.
Other Catholic investigations have warned that Rydén’s writings propose the consolidation of all Christian churches under a non-hierarchical system, which violates the Church’s principle of apostolic succession and papal authority. In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger said in a statement that “the faithful must not take the messages of Vassula Rydén as divine revelations, but only as her personal meditations”, explaining that in those meditations, “next to the positive aspects, there are negative elements in the light of Catholic doctrine”. (Günther Simmermacher)
Photo: Kurman Communications/Flickr
What is the Church’s problem with this mystic?
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” (405). I don’t pretend that original sin is an easy doctrine to comprehend, and even the Catechism itself acknowledges that “the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand” (404). The way that makes sense to me (which I have used in instructing converts) is that, because of the failure of our first parents, we have been born into a world surrounded by sin and selfishness, which makes it more difficult for us to be good. If my grandfather squandered away a fortune that would otherwise have been passed down to me, I would have lost out even though I had not been personally responsible. That, in my simple way of looking at things, is like original sin. (Fr Kenneth Doyle)
