YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

How can I explain original sin?

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?

YOUR 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).

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 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.

Illuminated parchment from Spain made around 950 AD depicting the Fall of Man, the cause of original sin. Do you have questions about our faith? Send them to: editor@scross.co.za Your Questions answered Subject line: Q&A

(Fr Kenneth Doyle)

What is the Church’s problem with this mystic?

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?

VASSULA 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 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.

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)

Vassula Rydén in 2013.

If she was assumed, why did Mary need a tomb?

Q. In Jerusalem there is a place that holds the tomb of Mary. But Our Lady was assumed body and soul into heaven, so why did she need a tomb?

MARY DIED ON MOUNT ZION, in the south of Jerusalem. That location is now marked by the Benedictine Dormition Abbey. When she closed her eyes for the last time — the Catholic Church doesn’t say whether or not she actually died, but Pope John Paul II said she did — her soul was received by Christ in heaven. But her lifeless body did not follow immediately.

To all appearances, Mary was dead, and therefore her remains needed a burial in a tomb, which would have taken place on the same day. That tomb in Jerusalem is located in what was then the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Several churches stood there from the 4th century, when Christians were allowed to build ecclesiastical structures.

When later the Apostles arrived at the tomb, they found it empty, apart from her shroud. This is at the foundation of the belief in the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven.

The first written account of that goes back to 451 AD, when Juvenal, the patriarch of Jerusalem, noted that Mary's tomb was discovered to be empty on the third day after her burial. The shroud was still in existence and sent to Constantinople in 452. But the burial at Gethsemane was attested in several writings preceding Juvenal, possibly going back to the 1st century.

There is an alternative theory that Mary actually died in Ephesus, modern-day Turkey. That is predicated on the notion that John would have taken her with him when he went to that city. However, the consistent tradition of the Church locates her final days in Jerusalem. While Scripture notes that John went to Ephesus, it makes no mention of him being accompanied by Mary.

By then she might well have left our world. The Transitus Mariae, a collection of 4th-6th century writings about the Blessed Virgin’s life, suggest that Mary was no older than 50 when she closed her eyes. By that calculation, if one assumes that Mary was at the youngest 13 when she gave birth to Jesus, and that Jesus was born around 4 BC (the year King Herod died), then the Blessed Virgin was born at the earliest around 17 BC. If she was indeed around 50 years old when she passed on, then that would have been in the year 33 AD, very soon after the crucifixion. And this would explain why all the Apostles could gather in one place, before they set off on their missionary journeys, and why St Paul makes no mention of having known Mary. (Günther Simmermacher)

Crusader-era stairs lead to the crypt which holds Mary’s tomb in Jerusalem.

Why did Jesus tell a man to break rules?

Q. After healing the paralytic man at the Pools of Bethesda on the Sabbath, Jesus tells him to pick up his mat and walk away. The man is then challenged by his fellow Jews to explain why he is breaking the Sabbath rules by carrying his mat (John 5:1). Why would Jesus have caused this man trouble by telling him to pick up his mat?

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT IN 1st-century Judaism there were several views about what was permissible on the Sabbath, and carrying a sleeping mat would not necessarily have been seen by all people as a breach of God’s Law.

Anyhow, it is abundantly clear that Jesus was often challenging people to look afresh at what God wants us to do, and to see things differently.

The presence of God is admirably attested by the fact of the healing, which in Jesus’ mind is a very important sign of the Kingdom of God. And Jesus’ opponents appear not even to

“Christ Healing the Paralytic at Bethesda” (1592) by Palma il Giovane

have noticed this extraordinary phenomenon!

The healing of the Paralytic is a reminder that all of us need always to have our eyes opened to detect the presence and action of God. And that cannot be managed by simply “obeying the rules” . (Fr Nicholas King SJ)

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