Original sin: the Serpent seduces Eve then Adam

Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, Domenichino (1581-1641)

L’Osservatore Romano commenting on the placing of the work of Maria Valtorta on the Index, retained this criticism, one of four of theological nature:

"Amid such a great display of theological knowledge, one can pick a few... pearls that certainly do not shine for their Catholic orthodoxy. Here and there is expressed, regarding the sin of Adam and Eve, a rather extravagant and inaccurate opinion."

This rather vague accusation finds its origin in a report by Alberto Vaccari from 1949. This report, long buried in the Holy Office file, was only made public with the opening of the archives of the pontificate of Pius XII (2020).

Alberto Vaccari, author or at least inspirer of the L’Osservatore Romano article, accuses Maria Valtorta of reducing original sin to the sexual act, echoing theories that were emerging at his time. Here is the allegedly incriminated text:

"Satan wanted to take away from man this intellectual virginity; with his viper tongue, he flattered and caressed the limbs and eyes of Eve, provoking in her reflexes and an excitement that they did not have before, when malice had not yet intoxicated them. [...] This sensation is sweet to her. 'The Woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to the eyes... She took of its fruit and ate.' Then she 'understood.' From now on, the bite of evil had descended within her. She saw with new eyes and heard with new ears the customs and voices of the brutes (= the beasts). And she desired them with a mad desire. She began sinning alone, but finished with her companion. [...] If man became rebellious to God, if he came to know lust and death, it is because of her. It is because of her that he no longer knew how to master his three kingdoms: that of The Spirit, since he allowed the spirit to disobey God; that of moral conduct, because he allowed passions to dominate him; that of the flesh, because he lowered it to the instinctive laws of beasts." [...] Since then, the triple concupiscence attaches to the three kingdoms of man.

Disorder of the senses leads to the triple concupiscence

Maria Valtorta describes a disorder of the senses leading to the triple concupiscence as explained by the Catechism of the Catholic Church forty-seven years after Maria Valtorta’s dictation.

• § 377: "The 'mastery' of the world that God gave to man from the beginning was realized above all in man himself as mastery over himself. Man was whole and ordered in his entire being because he was free from the triple concupiscence (cf. 1 John 2:16) that subjects him to the pleasures of the senses, to the desire for earthly goods, and to self-affirmation against the demands of reason."
• § 379: "It was this whole harmony of original justice, willed by God for man, that was lost through the sin of our first parents."

In the same work, the Church develops this notion of concupiscence and relates it to original sin:

• § 2515 – In its etymological sense, "concupiscence" can mean any vehement form of human desire. Christian theology gives it the particular meaning of the movement of the sensitive appetite that opposes the work of human reason. The Apostle Saint Paul identifies it with the revolt that "the flesh" wages against "The Spirit". It comes from the disobedience of the first sin. It disorders man's moral faculties and, without being a sin itself, inclines him to commit sins (cf. Council of Trent: Denzinger-Schönmetzer 1515).

• § 2516 – Already in man, because he is a composite being, spirit and body, there exists a certain tension; a certain struggle of tendencies occurs between "the spirit" and "the flesh." But this struggle, in fact, belongs to the heritage of sin, is its consequence, and at the same time a confirmation. It is part of the daily experience of spiritual combat."

Contrary to the opinions of the Holy Office censors (1960) and the Alberto Vaccari report (1949), the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) demonstrated that the opinion expressed by Maria Valtorta was neither "extravagant" nor "inaccurate." Moreover, far from Alberto Vaccari's words, it would have been sufficient to condemn the work.

The theological development by Maria Valtorta

This theological conformity is developed by Jesus in another passage and by the commentary Maria Valtorta makes on it:

In EMV 174.8/9, Jesus says:

"Sensuality ignites in those who are corrupted and, following sensuality, other unhealthy desires. – You already know how Eve was corrupted, and Adam through her. Satan embraced the Woman’s eye and bewitched it so that every vision until then pure took on for her an impure aspect and awakened strange curiosities. Then Satan kissed her ears and opened them to the words of an unknown science: his own. Even Eve's thoughts wished to know what was unnecessary. Then Satan showed to the awakened eye and mind the Evil that at first they had not seen nor understood, and all of Eve awakened and corrupted. And the Woman, going to the Man, revealed her secret and persuaded Adam to taste the new fruit so beautiful to see and hitherto forbidden. And she kissed him and looked at him with a mouth and eyes already troubled by Satan. And corruption penetrated Adam who saw, and whose eye desired the forbidden fruit. He bit it with his companion, falling from such a height into the mud."

In a long note occupying four pages of a folded leaflet inserted in a typed copy, Maria Valtorta explains what the corruption of Eve’s eye and ear consists of. After describing Eve’s original condition "who knew God with justice, saw herself and knew herself in her upper part as daughter of God," but was ignorant of her lower part as animal creature, the note continues:

"Satan, under the appearance of a serpent, attracted the imprudent one, fascinated her as is proper to a serpent, turned his cunning charm into a deadly poison that darkened the Woman’s spiritual sight and intelligence; then, with lustfulness and all sorts of insinuations, he revealed the Woman to herself. Then Eve saw herself as powerful as God, as if she had freed herself from the mark of every creature: having to obey all that God commands and being limited to doing what God permits. After she had rejected this mark to be 'like God,' the spiritual lust for the 'power to do everything' entered her. This gave rise to the intellectual lust for 'knowing everything': the Good and especially the evil God forbade her to know. On the contrary, the Serpent encouraged her, because it is only by full knowledge of Good and evil that Adam and she would become “like gods,” making their blood and their descendants immortal through their own power; he even proposed himself as master to enable them to know everything. And Eve took him as master. Intellectual lust, daughter of spiritual lust, gave rise to carnal lust. And Eve, who had already misused her sight and hearing for evil, also wanted to misuse touch by taking knowledge of the mysterious fruit, smell by inhaling its intoxicating essence, and taste by biting the bark of a new knowledge to savor its unknown confession. It was then that a concupiscent appetite arose in her to completely consume what she had barely tried: indeed, now deprived of Grace, of her innocence and integrity, what was bad appeared good to her, and she could no longer keep her sensuality under the subjection of reason. She knew herself, knew and wanted her companion to know: she went to him with a bad intention, led him to despise God’s command, tempted him to bite what she had bitten first. After thus making him like herself in lust and malice, she persuaded him to consume what was forbidden because it procured a new immediate sweetness and a future power to be like God by creating by themselves new men on earth under natural laws common to animals and different from those God had established."

The note concludes:

"The two ladders of Satan aim to make man, this child of God, an animal, and the only Son of God become man a sinner. The first descends from spirit to flesh and has 'succeeded' by the fatal fall. The second rises from flesh to spirit and has 'failed' for the following reason: Satan’s design to induce the Messiah to sin and therefore to destroy forever any possibility of man's regeneration to his condition as child of God served, thanks to the perfection of the Man-God, to confirm Christ in his grace as man and thus in his power as Messiah, cause of eternal salvation for the redeemed descendants of Adam."

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