<P> 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". </P> <P> As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death, and inclined to sin (this inclination is called "concupiscence"). </P> <P> The Catholic Church teaches that every human person born on this earth is made in the image of God . Within man "is both the powerful surge toward the good because we are made in the image of God, and the darker impulses toward evil because of the effects of Original Sin". Furthermore, it explicitly denies that we inherit guilt from anyone, maintaining that instead we inherit our fallen nature . In this it differs from the Calvinist / Protestant position that each person actually inherits Adam's guilt, and teaches instead that "original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants...but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man". "In other words, human beings do not bear any' original guilt' from Adam and Eve's particular sin ." </P> <P> The Church has always held baptism to be "for the remission of sins", and, as mentioned in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 403, infants too have traditionally been baptized, though not guilty of any actual personal sin . The sin that through baptism was remitted for them could only be original sin, with which they were connected by the very fact of being a human . The first comprehensive theological explanation of this practice of baptizing infants, guilty of no actual personal sin, was given by Saint Augustine of Hippo, not all of whose ideas on original sin have been adopted by the Catholic Church . Indeed, the Church has condemned the interpretation of some of his ideas by certain leaders of the Protestant Reformation . </P>

What is original sin in the catholic church