Is there a summary list somewhere I could look over? (I'll go use the Google to check...)
OK, I found a list here:
http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/churchdocuments/dogmas.cfm
Two things strike me about that list.
One - some of it can be interpreted in different ways. For example, the bit about Adam and the original pair of humans if taken in a literal extreme could be construed as being anti-Evolution/pro-Young Earth Creationist. For another example, take this explanation of original sin by a Catholic priest-monk, Fr. Thomas Keating (
Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel), and compare it to the statement in the dogmas:
4. The term original sin is a way of describing the human condition, which is the universal experience of coming to full reflective self consciousness without the certitude of personal union with God. This gives rise to our intimate sense of incompletion, dividedness, isolation, and guilt.
5. Original sin is not the result of personal wrongdoing on our part. Still, it causes a pervasive feeling of alienation from God, from other people and from the true Self. The cultural consequences of these alienations are instilled in us from earliest childhood and passed on from one generation to the next. The urgent need to escape from the profound insecurity of this situation gives rise, when unchecked, to insatiable desires for pleasure, possession, and power. On the social level, it gives rise to violence, war, and institutional injustice.
6. The particular consequences of original sin include all the self serving habits that have been woven into our personality from the time we were conceived; all the emotional damage that has come from our early environment and upbringing; all the harm that other people have done to us knowingly or unknowingly at an age when we could not defend ourselves; and the methods we acquired--many of them now unconscious--to ward off the pain of unbearable situations.
Two - as I am not baptized, I assume some of those dogmas are not supposed to be clear to me, but are they clear to the Catholics here? And do you have to accept this list
prior to Baptism if you are receiving that sacrament as an adult?