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"...and as an outsider..."

You may indeed be a beloved son of Holy Orthodoxy, but an outsider you are not.

Thank you for the post, Kolo, I'll have to chew on it for awhile. I used the theological term "Original Sin," with the hope of opening up room for patient discussion and mutual understanding. Perhaps I should have avoided it, since it opens up avenues for misunderstanding between Protestants and Catholics, since we apparently use different theological definitions of the word.

"If the Theotokos was not fully human, which is to say, that she was somehow preserved from the effects of either Original Sin, as the Latin Church would have it, or from the effects of the Sin of Adam, as the Pre-Schism Church had, and Orthodoxy still does have, it, then Christ, born of a "goddess" cannot be "True God and True Man"

Well, nobody is saying that St. Mary was a godddess or that she gave Christ his divine nature. I'm not sure I follow the above reasoning though, Kolokotronis, because it posits that the Sin of Adam is a necessary condition for being fully human. That would mean that Adam was not created "True Man."

"The Christian East never accepted the Augustian construction of Original Sin and thus there was never a need for a doctrine like the Immaculate Conception;"

Let me honest, Kolo, I have a very poor understanding of original sin, or alternatively, the sin of Adam. Also, I'm sure you've read more of St. Augustine than I have. Just to be clear, however, It's my understanding that St. Augustine's ideas of original sin were flawed and rejected by the Church in the West in the 11th century and after.

If I understand the situation correctly, the Church agrees in teaching that Mary was without sin. There is also agreement that She was cleansed of the Sin of Adam at some point during her early life. It's a question of when and how. With regards to the Immaculate Conception, the underlying questions center on concept of original sin. Do I have that correct? The Catechism identifies original sin as a deprivation of the holiness and justice which our first parents possessed prior to the fall. Do you think that's consistent with an Orthodox understanding of the sin of Adam? I've seen an Orthodox explanation which describes the Sin of Adam as a separation from God. (I've also had a Dominican friar explain original sin to me as an absence of relationship to God as adopted children.)

Would it be correct to say that in the Latin West, the consequence of original sin is a tendency toward sin, whereas in the Greek/Orthodox conception, the Sin of Adam is seen as a sort of "original mortality" that produces a tendency toward death and moral corruption? Do you believe that St. Mary had an inclination or tendency toward sin?

"I'm not sure I follow the above reasoning though, Kolokotronis, because it posits that the Sin of Adam is a necessary condition for being fully human. That would mean that Adam was not created "True Man."

Adam was created "in the image and likeness of God". As such he was capable of, but had not yet succeeded in prior to the Fall, fulfilling his created purpose which was to become "like God" or put another way, to achieve theosis which is a union with the uncreated energies, but not the essence, of God. By committing sin, Adam's created nature was so distorted that he and his descendants could no longer respond to God's unmerited grace in such a way as to "become like God", achieve theosis. That distortion by sin has descended to all men including, Orthodoxy believes, Panagia. I think it is important to understand that the One Church never taught that Adam was perfect, that he was in a state of perfect theosis (if he had been, there would have been no Fall). Post Fall humanity, of which Panagia was a member, while being in the image of God, was not in His likeness. he Incarnation took place at a discrete moment in time when humanity, men, were in a certain state. Christ was born of Mary into that world as a True Man, born of a very human young woman. But that young woman, though as incapable of "becoming like God" as anyone else, nevertheless was in some fashion given the grace to completely resist sin, or alternatively, whatever sins she did have were wiped away at the moment of the Annunciation...but she was not conceived and born as a creature ontologically different from you or me. If she had been, Christ would not have been born of woman but of some other sort of creature. Blessed Augustine's notions of Original Sin generally lead to a couple of other notions, one being the idea that Adam was in fact in a state of complete theosis before the Fall and second, that having sinned he became utterly depraved and that depravity extends to us in the form of Original Sin. Now as I said, if that were in fact true, then the Immaculate Conception dogma is necessary because Christ could not be born of an utterly depraved womb and in any event, because such a Mary would not have been able to respond to God's grace, she necessarily would have sinned because in +Augustine's world man couldn't not sin. But take away that pre-Fall theosis and subsequent utter depravity, and we can see why, first, Christ is called the Second Adam, Mary the Second Eve, because humanity is given a second chance, so to speak, by His birth. As +Athanasius said, "God became man so that men might become god." In other words fulfill our created purpose.

"The Catechism identifies original sin as a deprivation of the holiness and justice which our first parents possessed prior to the fall."

That isn't Orthodox teaching. In a nutshell, Adam's Sin deprived us of the ability to attain theosis through a response to God's uncreated grace which the Fathers taught falls on the good and the evil like rain on the earth. Consequently, we were in bondage to death and there wasn't a thing we could do about it. Christ restored the possibility of theosis by destroying the bonds of death as is graphically demonstrated in the icon of the Resurrection.

"Would it be correct to say that in the Latin West, the consequence of original sin is a tendency toward sin, whereas in the Greek/Orthodox conception, the Sin of Adam is seen as a sort of "original mortality" that produces a tendency toward death and moral corruption? Do you believe that St. Mary had an inclination or tendency toward sin?"

I can't say as to the West. For Orthodoxy, I think it is fair to say that the effects of the Sin of Adam were such that no matter how hard we tried, we "sinned". But here it is important to know that the Eastern concept of sin is different from that in the West. In Greek the word for sin is pronounced "amartia" and means "missing the mark". The mark is Christ. Thus sin is when we are not conforming ourselves to the "likeness of Christ", preferring ourselves and refusing to "die to the self". Of course we all do this, but unlike our pre Resurrection ancestors, we have the ability through a response to God's grace, to indeed die to the self. They couldn't. As for Panagia, I think that she always had the same potential to "miss the mark" that we all have, at least until the Annunciation and as I have said, at least one Father, +John Chrysostomos of all people, believed that in fact she did sin both before and after the Annunciation. The Church, of course, in conformity with the consensus patrum, says she was always sinless because despite her humanity, allowed her an option no one else had, which was to choose not to miss the mark. But her humanity, what she shared with all of us, was real and one of the effects of the Sin of Adam, physical death, came to her just as it will for us.