[Mrs. Don-o]

"The Orthodox Church believes that Mary, as a human being, could indeed have sinned, but chose not to. In the Roman Catholic understanding, it seems that Mary, who according to Roman doctrine had been exempted from the guilt of original sin [the Orthodox do not accept that humans share the guilt of the first sin but, rather, only the consequences] before all eternity, and thus could not have sinned."

Fr. John Matusiak is no doubt correct about Orthodox belief, but not quite correct about what Catholics believe.

(1) We do not believe you can be "guilty" of something you didn't do. We do not believe, therefore, that we are born "guilty" of Original Sin, but that we all suffer from the consequences of it because of the damaged human nature we inherited from our First Parents, Adam and Eve.

(2) We believe Mary was a human being with free will, and therefore could have chosen to sin: but she didn't choose to.

So unless I am mistaken, Catholic and Orthodox belief are essentially the same.

[kawaii]

As far as the Catholic understanding of the doctrine I defer to Catholic sources as to what Catholics beleive...