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The Fall, then, was devastating. And its extent? Is there complete darkness of mind? Complete loss of freedom? Is man a slave to his passions? Is he depraved? Is his nature corrupted? Luther and Calvin said, Yes. But the Church says, No: man is only deprived – of superadded gifts.

Here, I will argue with Fr. Hardon. I don't think he says it completely (who can blame him?), and I don't think he says it the best way.

Why, as he says, would the Angelic Doctor say that without supernatural grace one can do good for a while but not for long? It is because the conflict Paul describes in Romans 7 is ever with us. Without grace we will, first, not KNOW what a perfectly just motive would be and, second, always be of mixed mind and feelings, because we are shattered creatures. This inner division or rupture is just too much, too fundamental to be overcome without grace. A hero might be able to walk a little way with a torn Achilles tendon, but if he is to walk well the tendon must be repaired.

And similarly,I think Fr. Hardon is a little unfair to Calvin and especially to Luther. I'm really not sure of Calvin's philosophical competence, and I think Luther was messed over by Nominalism. But I think at least Luther would get that to speak of depravity and corruption cannot mean the every single aspect of the human being is completely evil. Philosophically and psychologically that won't hold water.

For: knowledge of the good and the ability to discriminate between good and evil are both goods.
A thing with SOME good cannot be totally evil.
Therefore the totally corrupt mind would not recognize that some things are better than others.
But few are so evil that they cannot appreciate pleasure or have no sense of justice and loyalty, even if it is a primitive and tribal sense.
And even those who think the Gospel foolishness or worse argue from ideas of justice, freedom,and responsibility and even truth.

SO,
unless we have a kind of meaningless tautology
(any good thing anybody ever did came entirely from grace and in spite of his thoroughly corrupt nature)
we must understand that fallen man is a disordered admixture of good and evil.

After all, the evil is not corrupted, What is good is corrupted with some taint, which does not remove but which spoils the good.
And therefore Fr.Hardon is perhaps a little glib both with the errors of Luther and Calvinbut also with the nature of original sin.

Q.E.D.

"The Fall. What intervened to disrupt God’s plan? Sin, the sin of Adam. And was it a grave sin? Yes.

Adam must have been one powerful individual to disrupt God's plan.

"Orginal Sin. Man in the state of original sin lacks sanctifying grace, and this is not mere absence; it is a privation. Something is not there in the soul which should be there. Moreover, there is the habitual inordinate tendency of the sense appetite, the proneness to inordinate appetition that we call concupiscence."

Man was created in the Image and Likeness of God per Genesis 1:26-27. God did not rescind any gift, nor did He change His mind in any other way.

"The consequences for Adam were loss of the supernatural gifts (except faith and hope??) and of the preternatural gifts: he became subject to concupiscence, pain, suffering and death of the body. And hell – eternal “death” of the soul – would be his lot unless God would show special mercy. For us the consequences were the same.

There was never any loss of gifts. Faith is simply a belief in what someone says. Hope is simply a desire for change based on some reason. Man was created as a sentient rational being in the Image of God. Knowledge and understanding are not elements of that Image, as was made clear in the parable of Genesis. That same parable indicates an immortal existence in this world was never a gift and neither was a pain free life. Note also that Ezekiel 18 indicates that God would never punish anyone else for someone else's transgression.

" Many struggled with this question of original sin. One of these was Pelagius, born either in England or Ireland. He later went to Rome. As spiritual director there, he heard people complaining in discouragement that they were unable to keep from sin, through lack of grace. From his own disturbance he emerged with an amazing answer: there is nothing wrong with human nature, no such weakness in it.

Pelagius was right, God created man in His Image and likeness and never retracted those gifts. Disturbance wasn't how he arrived at the conclusion though, rational thought was.

" Man is a moral superman, strong and independent, full master of his destiny: he can do anything, avoid every sin, do any good, even gain the Beatific Vision – without grace.

Hyperbole is neither evidence, nor fact. God's grace was in His creation and which was never rescinded.

" Adam had no grace, lost none for us; in fact he never fell. There was no fall, there is no original sin and hence no need of grace or baptism to remit this sin.

That's correct. See Gen 1:26-27 and Ezekiel 18.

"St. Augustine of Hippo struck out fiercely against this, and wrote out boldly: Nature can do nothing without grace. The controversy was on – with some monks in Africa, who felt Augustine had gone too far. St. Augustine clarified his position: nature can do nothing salutary, nothing conducive to salvation, without grace.

The grace was there at the beginning.

" But can human nature do all things natural to it – can it keep the whole moral law – without grace? We answer with St. Thomas and the Church: for a short time, yes; but for a long time, no."

There was never any time limit placed on how long a person's decisions would last.