Generational Progression

committed any voluntary sins of their own) to "pay" in justice for the sins of others.
On the other hand, it is also true to say that the sins of our ancestors — right back to
our first parents, Adam and Eve — do affect our lives today and leave us inheriting
some pretty heavy baggage to carry around. First of all, there is the inherited "wound" of
original sin that is passed down to all of us from the Fall of Adam and Eve. They were
the fountainhead of the whole human race, and when they turned their backs on God,
they cut off themselves, and their whole progeny, from the life-giving, original gift of the
Holy Spirit. They initiated a deprivation of spiritual life that left us all inheriting a human
condition in which we are subject to suffering and death, disordered desires, weakened
will power, and the clouding of the mind from the truth about God (see Catechism of the
Catholic Church, 404-405). God does not hold us all "morally responsible" for the Fall of
Adam, of course, but He did create us as an interdependent race so that we can suffer
both spiritually and bodily from the sins of others. We may think this unfair, but
remember that the interdependence of the human race is also the source of most of our
highest blessings, for example, the solidarity and intimacy of family life and the
communion of love and grace in which we participate as members of the Body of Christ.
To make such supreme blessings possible to creatures with free will like us, the Lord
also had to permit us to misuse that freedom and interdependence, with all its tragic
results.
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