Could Mary Have Saved Herself?

[LouisvilleFan]

[quote name='reyb' post='1340528' date='Jul 25 2007, 02:17 PM'][indent]original sin is really an issue. What is original sin?[/indent][/quote]

Original sin affects the human race through Adam, since he disobeyed God's commandment to avoid eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. All children of Adam and Eve are therefore born with this stain of original sin and there's nothing we can do to escape it outside of God's grace.

I'm not sure how to explain it further, but here is some more from the Catechism (with paragraph numbers):

404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam "as one body of one man". By this "unity of the human race" all men are implicated in Adam's sin, as all are implicated in Christ's justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act.

405 Although it is proper to each individual, 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: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". 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.

407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man's situation and activity in the world. By our first parents' sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails "captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil".Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social and morals.