Sin In Heaven

[Guest Jeremy]

I've actually asked this several times before and have never gotten an actual answer, so I thought I'd try here. If there is no sin in heaven, how did Lucifer fall? How could Lucifer feel jealousy if jealousy is a sin and there is no sin in heaven?

[cappie]

The tradition goes that the Angels like us were created with free will and chose to commit the sin of jealousy and pride.
The Catechism puts it this way:
II. THE FALL OF THE ANGELS

391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing."

392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels.(2Pet2:4) This "fall" consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God." The devil "has sinned from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies".(1Jn3:8)

393 It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels' sin unforgivable. "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death."

[Adeodatus]

There is no sin in heaven. There cannot be sin in heaven.

When Lucifer and his angels fell, they were not in heaven. They were in some kind of "angelic paradise"---a Garden of Eden for angels (not an actual physical garden!) where they were free to choose God or themselves. Those angels who chose God got what they wanted (i.e. heaven), and those who chose themselves got what they wanted (i.e. hell).