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What does the RCC say about the Great Flood described in the Bible? [View all]
From the article:
The Catholic Church does not prohibit interpretations of Genesis 6-8 that include a worldwide flood, but neither does the Church require there to be a worldwide flood in all interpretations of these passages. Instead, Catholic theologians understand the first eleven chapters of Genesis contain, in the words of Pope Pius XII, “simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people” (Humani Generis, 38).
Modern readers may interpret passages in Genesis that describe water covering “the earth” as meaning that the entire planet was inundated. But a resident of ancient Mesopotamia may have understood the “the earth” to mean only “the land” or the region he knew. In fact, the Hebrew word for “earth” used in this passage, eretz, can also mean “land,” as in Genesis 41:57, where it says that “all the eretz came to Egypt to buy grain” when a famine struck the region. This doesn’t mean that everyone on the planet went to Egypt to buy grain, just those people who inhabited the region to which the author was referring.
Modern readers may interpret passages in Genesis that describe water covering “the earth” as meaning that the entire planet was inundated. But a resident of ancient Mesopotamia may have understood the “the earth” to mean only “the land” or the region he knew. In fact, the Hebrew word for “earth” used in this passage, eretz, can also mean “land,” as in Genesis 41:57, where it says that “all the eretz came to Egypt to buy grain” when a famine struck the region. This doesn’t mean that everyone on the planet went to Egypt to buy grain, just those people who inhabited the region to which the author was referring.
To read more:
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-catholic-perspective-on-a-new-attraction
And there is also this, from the Catholic Bishops:
How should modern readers interpret the creation-flood story in Gn 2–11? The stories are neither history nor myth. “Myth” is an unsuitable term, for it has several different meanings and connotes untruth in popular English. “History” is equally misleading, for it suggests that the events actually took place. The best term is creation-flood story. Ancient Near Eastern thinkers did not have our methods of exploring serious questions. Instead, they used narratives for issues that we would call philosophical and theological. They added and subtracted narrative details and varied the plot as they sought meaning in the ancient stories. Their stories reveal a privileged time, when divine decisions were made that determined the future of the human race. The origin of something was thought to explain its present meaning, e.g., how God acts with justice and generosity, why human beings are rebellious, the nature of sexual attraction and marriage, why there are many peoples and languages. Though the stories may initially strike us as primitive and naive, they are in fact told with skill, compression, and subtlety. They provide profound answers to perennial questions about God and human beings.
To read more:
http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/0
Basically, a Catholic is free to read the story as literal or metaphoric, or a combination of both.
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