Those who reject original sin

[Denise]

Vatican Diary / Those who reject original sin

In progressive Catholic circles, the tendency is to deny its reality, or to treat it on a par with a "myth." The Council did not refer to it, but Paul VI explained why. The latest developments of the dispute

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VATICAN CITY, October 4, 2012 – The imminent fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Vatican Council II has reignited the dispute over the correct interpretation of that assembly:

- whether it is that "of reform, of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church," desired by the papal magisterium and explained in a simple and clear way by Benedict XVI in the famous Christmas address of 2005;

- or that of "discontinuity and rupture," maintained both by the Lefebvrists and, for opposite reasons, by Catholic progressivism and in particular by the history of the Council published in five volumes by the "school of Bologna."

One example of how progressive Catholicism interprets Vatican II as a moment of dogmatic rupture as well concerns the doctrine of original sin.

Symptomatic in this regard is what happened in Rome last September 15 at a conference celebrating Vatican II, which saw the participation of thousands of persons representing more than a hundred organizations of the Italian Catholic left.

At that conference, entitled "Church of all, Church of the poor," one of the main talks was given by Raniero La Valle, an eminent figure of the Catholic left, who at the time of the Council directed one of the main Italian Catholic dailies – there were more than one back then – "L’Avvenire d’Italia" printed in Bologna by Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro:

> Il Concilio nelle vostre mani

In his talk, La Valle said that "in its narration of the faith, the Council did not propose again the punitive doctrine of original sin, in the form deposited in the catechisms. There was this doctrine in the preparatory schema of the doctrinal commission, but the Council dropped it." And this "is not an oversight, it is a hermeneutic."

For La Valle, it is "evident how the Council, in remaining silent about the myth of the garden, listened to the 'sensus fidei' of the people of God."

According to him, since the time of the Council the Christian people have turned their backs on the dogma concerning the reality of original sin, which instead was not done by "the subsequent Catechism of the Catholic Church of 1992," which "exhumes that doctrine, the sign of a hierarchy resistant to Vatican II."

The idiosyncrasy with regard to the doctrine of original sin is rather widespread in the progressive Catholic world. In a more or less determined manner.

To remain in Italy, it should be enough to consider the case of Vito Mancuso, who rejects it drastically in that it is, according to him, "an authentic speculative and spiritual monster, the cancer that Augustine has left as an inheritance to the West":

> A Theologian Remakes the Catholic Faith from Scratch. But the Church Says "No"

The Augustine cited by Mancuso obviously is not just any author, but the father and doctor of the Church who wrote the "Confessions," responsible for the definition of original sin as "felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem," a definition that even in the postconciliar liturgies resounds in all of the churches of the world at the Paschal Vigil, when the Exultet is sung.

Or one can think of the prior of Bose, Brother Enzo Bianchi, for whom "original sin does not consist in an act of Adam and Eve that caused the ruin of us all, but rather in the fact that each one of us, coming into life, discovers that evil is already present on the scene of life, in his relationships with things and with others" ("AIDS, malattia e guarigione," Edizioni Qiqajon, 1995, p. 14). Or who in an interview in "la Repubblica" of May 3, 2000, after calling original sin a "myth," continued: "but today no Christian Church sees the story of Adam and Eve as the engine of a perverse mechanism by which sin is inherited without any fault whatsoever."

In reality, the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of "the reality of sin and particularly of the sin committed at mankind's origins" (par. 387). And it reiterates: "Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called 'original sin'" (par. 417).

The 1992 catechism is a fruit of the pontificate of John Paul II. It emerged from the request made by the fathers who participated in the 1985 Synod of Bishops, dedicated precisely to Vatican Council II, and was compiled under the leadership of a commission headed by then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

But on the doctrine of original sin, in spite of the objection of La Valle, the catechism does not rely exclusively on the preconciliar magisterium. The dogma of original sin, in fact, is recalled in one of the most solemn acts promulgated by Paul VI, the "Credo of the People of God," in the compilation of which a role by no means secondary was played by a figure like that of Jacques Maritain:

> The Credo of Paul VI. Who Wrote It, and Why

And in fact, paragraph 419 of the catechism cites precisely number 16 of the "Credo of the People of God" to affirm: "We therefore hold, with the Council of Trent, that original sin is transmitted with human nature, 'by propagation, not by imitation' and that it is. . . 'proper to each.'"

It is true that in the documents of Vatican Council II, the phrase "original sin" does not appear. But Paul VI himself responded to this objection in an address cited in a footnote to the 1992 catechism.

The address was delivered on July 11, 1966, before the participants at a symposium on original sin that was being held in Rome during those days:

> "Siamo particolarmente lieti, dilettissimi figli..."

In it, pope Giovanni Battista Montini responds precisely to that objection which still today reechoes, as has been seen, in circles belonging more to the Catholic intelligentsia than to the ordinary people of God.

After citing and commenting on passages of the conciliar constitutions "Lumen Gentium" and "Gaudium et Spes," Paul VI said:

"As appears clearly from these texts, which we have believed it opportune to recall to your attention, Vatican Council II did not aim at exploring and completing the Catholic doctrine on original sin, already sufficiently declared and defined at the councils of Carthage (418), Orange (529), and Trent (1546). It wanted only to confirm and apply it according to the requirements of its purposes, which were predominantly pastoral."

As for Benedict XVI, he has repeatedly insisted on the reality "of what the Church calls 'original sin,'" against the many who "think that in light of the history of evolution, there is no longer room for the doctrine of a first sin that then would have permeated the whole of human history."

In particular, pope Joseph Ratzinger dedicated to original sin two audiences on consecutive Wednesdays, those of December 3 and 10, 2008:

> And It Was Night. The Real Story of Original Sin

It can be added that, curiously, the doctrine of original sin does not find defenders only in popes like Paul VI, John Paul II, or Benedict XVI.

It was referred to recently by a non-Catholic particularly loved by progressive circles all over the world, a figure certainly not to be suspected of preconciliar sympathies.

This was United States president Barack Obama, in his famous 2009 speech at the University of Notre Dame, which garnered for him, precisely because of this reference, the praise of the theologian emeritus of the pontifical household, Cardinal Georges Cottier:
Politics, morality and original sin