QUOTATION: The Darkening of Reason

One of the greatest evils that the sin of Adam has produced in us, is that darkening of our reason by means of the passions which cloud our mind. Oh, how miserable is that soul that allows itself to be ruled by any passion! Passion, is as it were, a vapor, a veil which prevents us from seeing the truth. How can he fly from evil, who does not know what is evil? Besides, this obscurity increases in proportion as our sins increase.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: God Does Not Owe Us Friendship

You might say that it was very unjust of God to deprive us of friendship with Him, and of these other gifts, simply because Adam sinned. There would have been injustice if God deprived you of your due, but you are no more entitled to be a child of God than a razor has a right to bloom, or a rose has the right to bark, or a dog has the right to quote Dante. What Adam lost was gifts, not a heritage. On Christmas Day, when you distribute gifts to your friends, would I have a right to say to you: Why do you not give me a gift? You would answer: I am not doing you an injustice, because I owe you nothing. I am not obliged to give these gifts to my friends. If I had not given them gifts, I would not have deprived them of anything I owed them, So, neither did God owe us anything beyond our nature as a creature of his handiwork.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: The Consequences of Original Sin

 

If for some wrongdoing a man is deprived of some benefit once given to him, that he should lack that benefit is the punishment of his sin. Now in man s first creation he was divinely endowed with this advantage that, so long as his mind remained subject to God, the lower powers of his soul were subjected to the reason and the body was subjected to the soul. But because by sin man's mind moved away from its subjection to God, it followed that the lower parts of his mind ceased to be wholly subjected to the reason. From this there followed such a rebellion of the bodily inclination against the reason, that the body was no longer wholly subject to the soul. Whence followed death and all the bodily defects. For life and wholeness of body are bound up with this, that the body is wholly subject to the soul, as a thing which can be made perfect is subject to that which makes it perfect. So it comes about that, conversely, there are such things as death, sickness and every other bodily defect, for such misfortunes are bound up with an in complete subjection of body to soul.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Original Sin

This act of disobedience, which is called his original sin, man lost nothing which was due to him or to his nature. He lost only gifts, and became as St. Augustine has said, ‘Just mere man.’ On Christmas day when you distribute gifts to your friends, a person with whom you are unacquainted would not dare come to you and argue because you had failed to give him gifts such as you had given your friends. Your answer would be: sir, I have done you no injustice. I have deprived you of nothing which is your due. I have even given to my friends that which was not theirs. And so it is with Original Sin.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Catholic Hour, "Love’s Overflow" 3/23/1930

QUOTATION: Original Sin

There is in man a congenital moral weakness which goes hand in hand with the fragility of his being, with his psycho-physical fragility. And this fragility is accompanied by the multiple sufferings indicated in the Bible, from the very first pages, as punishment for sin.

--Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 2005

QUOTATION: Adam and Eve and Original Sin

Why did the serpent not attack the man, rather than the woman? You say he went after her because she was the weaker of the two. On the contrary, In the transgression of the commandment, she showed herself to be stronger...For she alone stood up to the serpent. She ate from the tree, but with resistance and dissent after being dealt with perfidiously. But Adam partook of the fruit given by the woman, without even beginning to make a fight, without a word of contradiction--a perfect demonstration of consummate weakness and a cowardly soul. The woman, moreover, can be excused; she wrestled a demon and was thrown. But Adam will not be able to find an excuse...he had personally received the commandment from God.


--St Irenaeus

QUOTATION: The Punishment of Original Sin

In the punishment of that sin [Original Sin] the retribution for disobedience is simply disobedience itself. For man's wretchedness is nothing but his own disobedience to himself, so that because he would not do what he could, he now wills to do what he cannot.

--St. Augustine, City of God, 14:15