3. From the Council of Trent concerning original sin:

(a) The entire Adam, through the offense of his prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse. The prevarication of Adam injured not only himself but also his posterity; it transfused not only death and pains of the body into the whole human race but also sin itself, which is the death of the soul (Session 5, numbers 1, 2).

(b) This sin of Adam — which in its origin is one, and being transfused by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his or her own — cannot be taken away by any other remedy than the merit of the one and only Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who reconciled us to God in his own blood, being made justice, sanctification, and redemption for us (Session 5, number 3).

(c) All human beings had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam; they became unclean and by nature children of wrath (Session 6, chapter 1).

7. The teachings of the Roman Catholics on justification, as gathered from the decrees of the Council of Trent, can be linked together and summed up as follows:

The sin of Adam was transfused into the entire human race. As a result, the state of the human race and of every individual within it was ruined and alienated from God. People became enemies [of God] and children of wrath. Therefore God the Father as an act of grace sent his Son to reconcile, ritually purge, appease, make satisfaction, and thereby redeem; and to do so by becoming justice.

Christ carried out and fulfilled this task by offering himself to God the Father as a sacrifice on the wood of the cross, that is, through his own suffering and his own blood. Christ alone earned merit. God the Father through the agency of the Holy Spirit assigns, attributes, applies, and transfers this merit of Christ’s to receptive individuals as an act of grace. In this way the sin of Adam is removed from them, although cravings do nonetheless remain and entice them to sin.

Justification is the forgiving of sins, which leads to a renewal of the inner self, by which we turn from an enemy [of God] into a friend and from a child of wrath into a child of grace. This brings us into a union with Christ. We are reborn as a living part of his body.