I'm going to comment on some statements in this article by a Catholic film critic:
Let’s begin by recognizing that most Christians are familiar with a strictly Sunday school version of the Noah story. Children love the stories of creation and Noah’s ark for an obvious reason: children love animals. These stories loom large in picture books and children’s Bibles, which play up the cute animals, sanitize and smooth out the narrative, and so forth.
I've read a number of Christian reviewers make that sweeping claim. Speaking for myself, I rarely attended Sunday school as a kid. I wasn't raised on a cartoon version of the flood narrative. Likewise, many people come to the Christian faith as adults. They had no Christian upbringing.
Whatever the movie looks like, I expect some pious moviegoers, especially biblical literalists, will be upset or angry about anything in the film that goes beyond the biblical text…
Well, Catholics are literalists when it comes to the Bread of Life discourse (John 6).
Likewise, in the flood narrative, the “sons of God” who took wives from the “daughters of men” have widely been interpreted in both Jewish and Christian exegesis as angelic spirits of some sort. Developed Christian angelology doesn’t easily lend itself to the notion of angels fallen or unfallen marrying human beings, despite attempts of some commentators to paper over the problem with theological speculation.
I think that's an anachronistic interpretation, based on reading later Intertestamental literature (i.e. 1 Enoch) back into Genesis. I disagree with that interpretation:
It has been recognized for some time that the early chapters of Genesis, i.e., Genesis 1–11 (the pre-Abrahamic primeval history), represent a literary form quite different from later, historical texts.
In fact, Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis characterizes these chapters as “not conforming to the historical method” as practiced by ancient as well as modern writers, calling them instead “a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people” in “simple and metaphorical language.”
This is not to say that Adam and Eve or Noah and the flood are only metaphors for something that never happened. The pope adds that these early chapters still “pertain to history in a true sense” (“which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes”). But clearly the accounts of creation, Adam and Eve and Noah and the flood are not historiography in the same sense as, say, the Gospels. That is, they are not a record of human experiences in living memory, based directly on eyewitness testimony, interviews with eyewitnesses, and so forth. The Gospels offer historical evidence for the basic outline of Jesus’ life that even unbelievers must reckon with.
The early chapters of Genesis are different. They describe events thousands of years before Genesis was written — events which, in some cases, no human eye witnessed. While it’s possible to imagine the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah being handed down by oral tradition for thousands of years, no believer accepts Genesis 1–11 based on the trustworthiness of millennia of oral tradition. Even if the writer of Genesis saw the whole flood story exactly as it happened in a vision from God, that would make it true, but it still wouldn’t be historiography in the same sense as the Gospels; it would be visionary writing.
In fact, the writer of Genesis mentions neither visions nor millennia of oral tradition; he doesn’t say where his material comes from, or on what authority he has it. Historical criticism suggests that the stories as we have them incorporate material drawn from a number of ancient oral traditions (“popular narrations,” Pius XII calls them). Of course, we believe that the selection and shaping of sources was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Pope John Paul II said of the story of Adam and Eve:Following the contemporary philosophy of religion and that of language, it can be said that the language in question is a mythical one. In this case, the term “myth” does not designate a fabulous content, but merely an archaic way of expressing a deeper content.Following these papal sources, we should be able to say that it is not beyond the pale of Christian orthodoxy, and defined Catholic teaching in particular, to classify the Flood narrative in Genesis as divinely inspired mythology. Again, that to say this is not to say that there was no flood or no Noah. It is simply to say that the writer of Genesis did not have the kind of historically verifiable access to the events he was writing about that pertains to writers of history.
i) To say Gen 1-11 is metaphorical rather than historical is a rearguard action. That reflects the triumph of modernism in contemporary Catholicism. It's certainly not the traditional view of Gen 1-11.
ii) Scholars who deny the historicity of Gen 1-11, or treat it as metaphorical, don't suddenly view the rest of the Pentateuch as historical. Scholars who take that view of Gen 1-11 don't think the patriarchal narratives, or Exodus, or wilderness account, constitute a record of human experiences in living memory, based directly on eyewitness testimony, interviews with eyewitnesses.
By the same token, Catholic NT scholars like Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, John Meier, and Luke Timothy Johnson, are fairly skeptical about the historicity of the Gospels. They spend a lot of time trying to sift the historical residual from the legendary embellishments–as they see it.
iii) But here we also witness a profound tension in modern Catholic piety. For instance, the same pope who characterizes these chapters as “not conforming to the historical method” as practiced by ancient as well as modern writers, calling them instead “a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people” in “simple and metaphorical language,” also said:
we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus_en.htmlLikewise, the same pope who said "the language in question is a mythical one…an archaic way of expressing a deeper content" also commissioned a new catechism, which his successor had a leading role in editing. That document makes claims such as:
The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ's birth "did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it." (499).
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p122a3p2.htm
When the Church asks publicly and authoritatively in the name of Jesus Christ that a person or object be protected against the power of the Evil One and withdrawn from his dominion, it is called exorcism. Jesus performed exorcisms and from him the Church has received the power and office of exorcizing. In a simple form, exorcism is performed at the celebration of Baptism. The solemn exorcism, called "a major exorcism," can be performed only by a priest and with the permission of the bishop. The priest must proceed with prudence, strictly observing the rules established by the Church. Exorcism is directed at the expulsion of demons or to the liberation from demonic possession through the spiritual authority which Jesus entrusted to his Church (1673).
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c4a1.htm
In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained" (1374).
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a3.htm
John-Paul II was devotee of Fatima:
This raises an interesting question. Why not interpret "Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth" as mythical or metaphorical language? Why not interpret demonic possession and exorcism as an archaic way of expressing a deeper content? Why not interpret the claim that "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained" in a wafer as mythical or metaphorical? Why not treat the Assumption of Mary as a metaphor? Why not treat Marian apparitions like Fatima as mythical or metaphorical?
Devout Catholic intellectuals are by turns skeptical and superstitious. Rationalistic and fideistic.
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