الخطيئة الأصلية
The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" explains that in "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." ... Original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin 'contracted' and not 'committed' – a state and not an act" ("Catechism of the Catholic Church", 404). This "state of deprivation of the original holiness and justice ... transmitted to the descendants of Adam along with human nature" ("Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church", 76) involves no personal responsibility or personal guilt on their part (cf. "Catechism of the Catholic Church", 405). Personal responsibility and guilt were Adam's, who because of his sin, was unable to pass on to his descendants a human nature with the holiness with which it would otherwise have been endowed, in this way implicating them in his sin. The doctrine of original sin thus does not impute the sin of the father to his children, but merely states that they inherit from him a "human nature deprived of original holiness and justice", which is "transmitted by propagation to all mankind".