Some background and thoughts about Catholic teaching on Sin, part 1
This is a much belated response to some questions above. I apologize for the length of time it took me to respond, and to respond to some other things people have posted here; these long posts take some time to compose. I hope they benefit people; if they don't evangelize or revive faith, I at least hope they help people to understand that Catholic faith and it's teachings a little bit, even though I am a lay person and hardly an expert, just a good memory, have read and consumed a lot of other media and information, good with the abstract metaphysical concepts and languages and stuff.
BTW In the footnotes I put some discursive material but some of which I think is pretty interesting (otherwise I'd have left it out 
) and I hope you'll consider them worth reading.
Please don't be put off if I use technical terms or languages or whatever, I assume most are easily Google/Wiki'd or just ask
OK, on several occasions I saw this bumped, looked at it, and never got to it. My apologies. I'll now do another longer, digressive post. Part of the reason for my hesitation, perhaps, is that my spiritual life is not what it should be these days - faith is for almost all of us a constant internal struggle, not a simple decision to will oneself to believe (as the Arminian-type Evangelical Protestants and their theological descendants have it, this is what you will hear a lot of in America, "simply accept Christ as your personal savior," &c.), nor is it simply bestowed upon the predestined according to a providential plan (the Calvinist position, which you do
not hear as popularly here, and for good reason, it's a rather unpleasant teaching that God has predestined some to Heaven and some to Hell; there are Biblical passages which vaguely support this, but the Catholic position is always not to merely pick a verse
*
Catholic teaching on sin, grossly oversimplified, and once more disclaimed that I am not a theologian or a priest, is as such;
We are born in a state of Original Sin. As most will know, this derives from the narrative of the Fall of Man in Genesis (at chapter iii.)
Let's do a close read of the essential part of this narrative (the classic "eating the apple," although nowhere is it actually called an apple, and the following curses placed by God on mankind.) Let me state ahead of time that I am not necessarily saying these are
literal historical events, they can just as well be treated as an allegorical explanation of the sinful nature of mankind, and indeed, very interestingly, contain within them the germ of Christian soteriology.
In the garden of Eden, there were
two trees; the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God gave the Tree of Life to Adam and Eve; presumably, this would give they and their descendants and immortal and perfect existence in the Garden of Eden; but, of course, things didn't go down like that. The serpent—read as Satan, although he is not called Satan in Genesis—the Judgment Day scenario of Apoc. 20 calls him "the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan." In the same part of the Apocalypse, a very vivid vision of the end-of-the-world scenario, there are two books involved in the final judgment of "the living and the dead," one of these books being the Book of Life, and the other a book recording men's deeds; these do correspond rather neatly to the two trees of Genesis.
This scripture can be read in a rather forthright meaning, but the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" is particularly interesting. The following is a bit of my take on it, but follows along with Church doctrine. So, to reader at first glance, knowledge sounds good, right? And for God to deny knowledge to man would seem wrong, wouldn't it? Indeed, there have been heretical sects since very early in the Christian era and perhaps before who believe that interpreted in their particular esoteric fashion the eating of the "knowledge-fruit" to be a positive development, and see the serpent
3 as the real hero of the narrative, and God to be a sort of tyrant; this is a forever-returning idea that's been hold by certain ancient Gnostic sects
4, but this is contradicted about the entirety of the Scriptures, and creates a new religion entire. But, especially to the modern reader, "knowledge of good and evil" doesn't seem like a bad thing—or knowledge in general, full stop. The word is more complex, though; Hebrew
דַּעַת, in the Septuagint (LXX), a pre-Christian translation of the
Tanakh (OT) into Greek
2, it is
γιγνώσκω, from which γνῶσις (
gnosis, as in gnosticism.) Neither term means "knowledge," exactly, in the general sense of the English word, "acquaintance" has proposed as a translation, in terms of having a particular sort of
intimate knowledge. Essentially, by eating of the tree of knowledge, man not only gains knowledge, but capability, of good or evil, prior to that being sinless, although in some ways limited.
The text of actual conversation between woman and serpent is interesting
5:
The serpent, the most cunning animal the LORD God had made, spoke thus to the woman:
—Did God really said to you, that you may not eat of any tree in the garden?
—We may eat from the fruits of the trees of the garden, but as for the fruit of [the Tree of Knowledge], God said, "You shall not eat from it, or touch it—or you will die the deatha!", [she answered.]
—You will surely not die the death! See, God knows that on the day that you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like a god, knowing good and evil.
The woman looked the tree over, seeing that it was fine food, and beautiful to look at, and worthy of desire in that it would grant understanding. So she took some of it's fruit and ate it; likewise, she gave some to her husband beside her, and he partook as well; whereupon both of their eyes were open, and they realized they were naked, so they sewed together fig-leaves to make loincloths.
Genesis, iii
Afterwards, God walks through the garden "at the time of the evening wind," which can be translated as
at the time of the evening spirit. See two things here; God is
walking among men—we hear otherwise in the Bible that to behold the face of God would strike a man dead (as was told to Moses in Exod. 33) this can taken (
a) to be the second person of the Trinity, who would become incarnate in Jesus Christ, or (
b) to show that man, before being cursed by God and expelled from the garden, shortly thereafter, could see the face of God without dying; perhaps both interpretations are true, or another, but clearly, as throughout the very beginning of the Bible, man enjoyed a much closer relationship with God; secondly, we can read alternatively "the evening spirit," (
רוח =
πνεύμα, both can be read as "spirit," "wind," "breath") and imagine that God visited our first parents every evening.
Next, the consequences. God calls after Adam, Adam comes forth, saying he hid himself because he was naked, God asks (rhetorically; not that He did not know, of course,) "who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I forbade you from eating from?"
Adam says, "the woman who You gave me, she gave me some of the fruit, and yes, I ate it."
So God asks the woman, "what have you done?" and she replies, "it was the serpent! He deceived me!"
Witness (
a) the business of the nudity. Adam and Eve were naked in the garden before. They "realized" they were naked upon eating from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." Their nakedness was innocent before, because they knew nothing of shame, because they lacked this knowledge, or rather, this "acquaintance" with good and evil, their now dual nature; seeing nakedness as shameful because they now knew of the sins that could involve or be provoked by it.
And (
b) the blame game. Nothing unfamiliar to the modern couple. God asks Adam, basically WTF? He externalizes. He blames his wife. His wife blames the serpent. Nobody takes responsibility.
Then God curses the serpent: "Because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock and more than any wild animal.You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel
6."
There's some interesting stuff going on here: "Your seed" directed as a woman doesn't make sense, taken literally; especially in the very patriarchal culture of the Jews at the time all of this was written.
Seed means, in the most literal sense, semen, but more commonly as used in the Bible it means the children a man has sired by that means. So a "woman's seed" makes no sense, because the seed comes from a man, right?
Only one case in which that computes ...
And what about this business of striking the head, and the heel? Notice the bottom of the depiction of Mary before. Why is she standing on a snake? Her seed, Jesus, has defeated the Devil, "striking his head;" he died on the cross, but was resurrected. Only so much damage done. Striking his heel, metaphorically. A blow to the head is much more powerful than a blow to the heal. Mary,
mater dolorosa is "struck" (this is also intimately related with the prophecy given by Simeon while Mary was with child, that a "sword would pierce her heart," meaning the grief of standing at the bottom of the cross watching the death of her son.) The snake at her feet is dead, though, having been struck down by Christ.
But that's all a long way off.
God then curses Adam and Eve to the difficulties we now know in life—her difficulty in childhood and subjugation to her husband; his needing to labor daily to "eat bread by the sweat of [his] brow"; even the ground is cursed, no longer bringing forth plentiful food for mankind to eat, but requiring intensive labor. God says,
You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow
until you return to the ground,
since you were taken from it.
For you are dust,
and you will return to dust
6.
Remember all the business about "dying the death?" Most translations have this just as "die." In Hebrew, doubling the word is a way of intensifying or placing extra emphasis on it, "die!" So, the deception of the serpent here—he is not literally lying when he says that "you shall certainly not die…," as in, be struck dead immediately upon eating the fruit, but "…die the death" is a different matter. This means the introduction of mortality into the world. "For you are dust"—from which Adam was created—"and you will return to dust," die.
Saint Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, chapter 5: "… sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all men, because all sinned."
The dual nature of acquaintance with/knowledge of good and evil were passed on from Adam and Eve onwards to all mankind. In a variety of places in both the Old and New Testaments (including a statement of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, "be thou perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.") St. James says, "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all," God at various places in the
Torah demands perfect obedience to the law, "walk before me and be blameless," he asks of Abraham at one point.
Now, with "acquintance" with good and evil, who can be perfect?
Not a single one.
"All have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God," St. Paul writes again in the letter to the Romans (ch. iii)
This is the matter of original sin. All are tainted with it. A specific Divine miracle gave Mary her "Immaculate Conception," which is
not, as per a common misconception, a term for the miracle of the Virgin Birth. The Immaculate Conception prevented Mary from inheriting original sin, and she too, "a virgin without spot," remained sinless, and gave birth, miraculously, still as a virgin, to Jesus Christ, likewise untainted by original sin, and who lived a blameless and sinless life; his sacrifice on the Cross, via what is called the
substitutionary atonement. The first letter of Peter, the first Pope, states, Christ "Himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, … [He] died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God," the same concept is found in the letters of Paul and elsewhere in Scripture, including many times allegorically (e.g. the Passover and the blood of the lamb—the Last Supper was, of course, a Jewish Passover meal,
Christus innocens Patri reconciliator peccatores, as the beautiful Easter hymn
Victimæ Paschali, has it.)
Some Evangelical Protestant Christians believe that one merely must "accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior" and then will be saved. Some Methodist and Holiness Pentecostals believe that after this is done, if done honestly, than one will no longer sin, citing verses like "No one who lives in Him [Christ] keeps on sinning." (I John iii, 6). But yet, even the holiest of people struggle with sin. St. Paul speaks honestly of his own struggles with the flesh in his letter to the Romans and elsewhere. Even priests and the Pope go to confession, and often. Frequent confession is encouraged by the Church and all recent, and most in general Popes have preached and practiced it. Pius XII and John Paul II, among others, went every day.
How do we reconcile this with the idea that "no one who lives in Him keeps sinning?" The spiritual life is a daily struggle. We are not at all moments living with Him, we are tempted by the flesh. Catholic theology calls this
concupiscence. The word is often associated with sexual lust but does not by any means mean so exclusively. It means our own inborn inclination to do things that are contrary to the teachings of God, nature, and even our own well being. The Church teaches that human nature is originally good, tainted only by the fall, which, by virtue of knowledge/acquaintance with both good
and evil, lead to the possibility of concupiscence, which by itself isn't a sin, but a strongly inclination to, although Jesus taught us that lusting after a woman in our heart (specifically) is akin to the sin of adultery, and sustained anger to murder.
One aspect of Catholic teaching that is not found in most Protestant denominationsis that of mortal versus venal sin. The First Letter of John speaks to this, "All unrighteousness is sin, and [
or, but
] there is sin that does not bring death," but also speaks of "sin that brings death" as a much graver matter. Death in this context can be understood in a similar sort of way to "dying the death," but herein is meant condemnation to Hell, as mortal sins do; venal sins rather add to time spent in Purgatory. Both should be confessed sacramentally.
Almost all people not dying in a state of mortal sin will spend time in purgatory before Heaven; there are Catholic teachings about specific lengths of time spent there, but in more modern teachings, time is more or less meaningless there (as it is for God, in Heaven, or in Hell.) Purgatory means a place of purgation, i.e. purging the soul of sin. It is not something to be feared so much as a step on the way. Catholics in fact pray for the "Holy Souls in Purgatory;" if there are "Holy Souls" there, it is not a place of punishment, but rather a part of the spiritual journey to blessedness and dwelling with God.
The Gk. term for sin, ἁμαρτία, etymologically means "missing the mark," as in shooting an arrow and missing the target. Sin is "missing the mark," the teachings of God and the guidelines set by Him for living a Holy life
There is no exhaustive list of what constitutes a sin, but there are several notable enumertions of serious sins. The "seven deadly sins" are compiled from various places in the Bible, and are: envy, gluttony, avarice, lust, pride, sloth, wrath. Other compilations of serious sins in the Bible include this one in the letter to Galatians, chapter 5: "Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I tell you about these things in advance—as I told you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."
Add to this, of course, the Ten Commandments; another list is found in Proverbs 6, very similar to the seven deadly sins, "… the Lord hates … a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren." These are for the most part counted among mortal sins, but are not an exhaustive list. Venal sins are more minor matters, but still important deviances from God.
Baptism, which can only be performed once, removes sin; in the Catholic church, it is usually practiced on infants, otherwise on people converting to Catholicism who did not previously have Christian baptism (the Church teaches that any Baptism "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost8" is valid, even if not done by a Catholic priest, and can be done in cases of emergency by laypeople, i.e. in a baby who has been just born but is dying.) This removes the "stain" of original sin, although not the possibility of concupiscence later on; Baptism of an adult removes all previous sins, as well. After that, Confession is needed. The Bible mentions "confess your sins to one another," but does not specifically call for a priest, but this has been the practice of the Church since time immemorial. This somewhat lengthy lecture by Dr Scott Hahn, a former Protestant minister who has converted to Catholicism, deals with confession in much more depth and with much more knowledge than I can here, and I'd highly recommend it; Dr Hahn's videos and other materials were instrumental in my conversion to Catholicism.
"Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit" is much spoken about, as the unforgivable sin. It comes, generally from one verse Matthew 12:31-2, "I tell you, people will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the one to come." Context is important (see fn. 1) The context is that the Pharisees are accusing Jesus of being in league with Satan and, basically, using black magic to cast demons out of people. They are attributing a very important act of God, and one pivotal in the history of salvation, to Satan, rather than God. In the book of Isaiah, God, speaking to those people in Israel who were leaving the true faith, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (ch. v) This is not a sin that one can commit unknowingly. The Pharisees should have known better; they were well acquainted with Scripture and it's teachings and the expectation of moschiach, the Christ, but when He came, they accused him of being in league with Satan. This is not the sort of thing that an ordinary person is going to run into.
Apart from that, just as Christ says in the same passage, people will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy. What is required is confession, penance, and a sincere act of contrition. Confession is just that. When you go in to the box (and many places will do away with that, sometimes just sitting back to back with the priest, or even face to face), if you are unsure of what you are doing, the priest will help. They have heard all sorts of things, and almost certainly have heard worse than anything that you have to say. They are not judgmental. They may give some advice, but the confessional is not for counseling. You need not get into a lot of detail, just name the sins that you have committed, what sort, how often ("number and kind" is a traditional phrase.) The act of contrition, there are various prewritten prayers, some long, some short, some more traditional, some more modern, but can also be a prayer of your own, but the prayer in essence is to tell God that you are sincerely sorry for having "missed the mark" and that you want to do better. This has to be sincere. You can't keep sinning and just figure, oh well, I can go to confession once next week, and be absolved. The confession and act of contrition have to be sincere. The penance can vary from the priest, classically and typically, it involves reciting some prayers, but sometimes it will be something else, I have been in confession and given a penance as simple as "do a nice thing for somebody today."
More later. Consider this part one; and I'll of course try to participate as best as I can with any questions or responses people give.
I also have something about the binding of Isaac but I lost it with a broken computer and intend to fix that up again, but these long posts do not just flow, there's a more than a bit of time and effort involved. This one took a few days (not constantly of course but I have to be in the right space and use the right part of my brain which is a bit tired now but I promise I'm going to return here with some more posts of the length/depth of this one, assuming people are interested)
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Notes
1 It is worth noting that the chapters and verses in our modern Bibles are rather late innovations. Various methods of partitioning out the books for easy reference have existed for a long time, but they were usually specific to a specific manuscript, and those which were copied after it. Our chapters date to the 13th century (a very productive and beautiful century in Church history), verses in the NT date only to the famous Gk. publication of Stephanus in 1551 (also one of the first books published in the typeface Garamond, a modern permutation of which you almost surely have right on your computer.) OT verses developed by Jewish rabbis came only a little earlier, but in any event well into post-Biblical times. Why does this matter? It's a common fallacy to use these verses out of context in "proof-texting," where a circle of quotes from various sources is connected to formulate a doctrine rather than reading the Scripture in it's totality, and in it's context, and through the lens of Sacred Tradition. Biblical interpretation is called exegesis ("bringing forth"); reading one's own ideas into the Bible is called eisegesis ("bringing into,") which is never the right way to interpret Scripture. There's a humorously exaggerated anecdote that makes the point rather well. There was a man deep in depression seeking spiritual solace from Scripture, but he went about doing so in the following manner. He flipped he book open, and blindly pointed his finger to a spot on the page, finding himself at the book of Matthew, xvii, 5. And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself Disturbed, he tried it again, moving forward in the Bible to the Book of Luke, x, 37, which says in part, Jesus told him, Go yourself and do likewise. The final effort brought him to John, xiii, 27, which, again in part, has Jesus saying, Go and do likewise. Prof. Israel Shahak (Jewish History, Jewish Religion, chapter 3) relates that the Orthodox rabbinate interprets Exod. 23:2, "thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment," by reading only the last words of this sentence, "decline after many to wrest judgment," quite literally inverting the meaning. Shahak writes that the "text plainly warns against following the bandwagon in an unjust cause … [and is twisted so as to be] interpreted as an injunction to follow the majority." The moral of the story being be very careful of literature and preachers who constantly are citing single verses to prove one point or another, without context—historical, traditional, and in the text surrounding the verse. The Catholic and Orthodox attitudes toward the Bible tend to be more holistic, while still believing, when it comes to Scripture, than Protestants; one of Luther's bywords was sola scriptura, but this is a self-defeating fallacy—to say, sola scriptura, one must define scriptura, which necessarily invokes extra-scriptural Tradition; not to mention that the whole concept of Bible interpretations being personal or subjective (even to a pastor preacher); not to mention, in Scripture itself, the second letter of Peter warns strongly against "private interpretation" of Scripture, meaning that Scripture and Prophecy are interpreted inside the Church.
2 The LXX is especially important for the study of the Bible, as is the Latin Vulgate (which is the standard text for the purposes of the Church.) Available texts (that is to say, actual physical manuscripts that still exist) of the LXX are much, much older than any Hebrew manuscripts; also it was translated at a time where Hebrew was a living language, and, as it is pre-Christian, there is no question of the bias resulting from conflicting interpretations of Jews and Christians. The controversy over the interpretation of the word עַלְמָה, translated as παρθένος, "virgin," which some Hebrew scholars—mostly Jewish, or liberal/modernizing Christians who would deny the Virgin Birth, a cornerstone of the faith—maintain means only "young woman" without an implication of virginity. The translators of the LXX would be unlikely to make the mistake, especially as a virgin conceiving is such a striking statement, and would have no reason to do so in order to promote Christianity, unlike the Jewish and Modernist scholars who have an agenda to disparage it.
3 Books could be written about the symbolism of serpents in the Bible, both positive and negative. A serpent raised on a pole in the book of Numbers gives divine protection to the Israelites, Jesus instructs his disciples to be as "wise as serpents and [but] harmless as doves." But of course the term is also used to refer to Satan, the tempter and adversary.
4 Gnosticism is an incredibly broad term when used historically to describe historical groups with a very wide range of beliefs, but mostly of a syncretic character combining Christianity with neo-Platonic Greek philosophy, Eastern mystery cults, and Jewish mysticism, resulting in a strange brew of multiple male and female "emanations" of God (see again Shahak, loc. cit.), pyramids of different divinities with an inacessible and abstract divine entity at the top, and God relegated to a mere demiurge (a Platonic concept), a creator; sometimes, like in some Eastern religions (cf. Maya), reality is seen as an illusion to be overcome; but the overall concept of Gnosticism is salvation not by works, not by faith, but by γνωστικός, having "knowledge," but the concept is much deeper than that (see text.) Gnostics had very different ideas about sin than mainstream Christians. For Gnostics, their practical exercise of their faith ranged from extreme asceticism (abstinence from various types of food, sexual relations, and other worldly things) to extreme libertinism. Gnosticism survived well into the medieval era, where it was the subject of many inquisitions against heresies and even the bloody Albigensian Crusade, and afterwards; much modern New Age philosophy is just gnosticism repackaged and rebranded, and many New Age teachers specifically refer to gnosticism or explicitly claim the term.
5 This rough translation into contemporary language is my own, drawing upon several sources with reference Hebrew (MT) and Greek (LXX) text. I mix some dynamism with literal translation of Hebrew idiom, i.e. "die the death," discussed supra; my main English sources are the NASB and the HCSB.
6 Most of the following Scriptural quotations will be from the HCSB, NASB or occasionally the KJV.
7 καί, a conjunction which can, dependent on context, mean either.
8 Ghost = Spirit = רוח = πνεύμα; "Holy Ghost" is somewhat more traditional, but "Holy Spirit" is synonymous.
