Many Christians today regard the story of Adam and Eve as little more than myth. But as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) explained in his 1995 book In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, the Catholic Church insists that all humans are indeed descended from two first parents, whom the Bible calls Adam and Eve. Even if God used material evolution as a means of creation, Cardinal Ratzinger explained, the soul, as spirit, could never evolve from matter. It is the combination of soul and body that separates man from the rest of God's creation, and the ensoulment of man requires an act of God above and beyond material evolution.
Created holy and innocent, Adam and Eve had perfect freedom of will. Like the angels who had rebelled against God, they used that free will to disobey the one command that God had given them. Through this Original Sin, sickness and death entered the world. The Sacrament of Baptism removes the guilt of Original Sin from each of us, but the effects remain, and each of us struggles today because of the sin of our first parents.
God did not leave mankind to wallow in the darkness of sin and death, however. Instead, He promised us a Redeemer: His Son, Jesus Christ. In recognition of the perfect submission with which the Blessed Virgin Mary would play her role in the story of our salvation, God, through the merits of Christ, kept her free from sin from the very moment of her conception.
Lesson Fifth from the Confirmation Catechism has 12 questions. Note that the lesson begins with Question 39, continuing with the numbering from Lesson Fourth.
As I noted last week, the numbering for the lesson from the First Communion Catechism will diverge from this week on. Lesson Fourth from Catechism No. 1, "On the Angels and Our First Parents," includes 9 questions drawn from Lesson Fourth and Lesson Fifth of the Confirmation Catechism.
Check out this week's lesson, and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments or ask them in the Catholicism Forum!
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