What is the Catholic Church’s view of the creation story in Genesis?

Answer

For this you can consult the Catholic catechism at http://www.stvitus.nl/kkk/default_m.asp . You choose one of the catechisms and via a search term ‘creation’ you can find out the official view of the Catholic Church.

e.g. from the 1966 New Catechism:

From chapters 1-11, Genesis describes the basic elements of all human life with God. It is not until chapter 12, Abraham, that we begin to discern historical figures in the past. Now what is the message contained in these eleven chapters?

1. That God creates and grows, like the creation poem (Gene. 1) and the magisterial family trees (which cannot be taken literally) proclaim to us.

2. It also appears that man is meant for friendship with God, such as the paradise story (Gene. 2) come through.

3. The third element is human sin. From its own bitter experience, Israel’s faith had come to know this constant in human history. Four times therefore primeval history describes a Fall: the eating of the forbidden fruit, the fratricide, the corruption of Noah’s contemporaries, the building of Babylon. These deeds are symbols of our great sins.

4. But God does not leave man alone. Already in Israel He shows Himself an incomprehensibly merciful God. This also shows the primal stories. After every fall into sin also a gesture of grace.

In the flight from paradise it is God who gives clothes, and who speaks the promise that the offspring of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. Cain receives a sign that prevents him from being killed. In fact, in the story of Noah, the element of salvation occupies almost all its place. And after Babylon? After Babel, the story of Abraham immediately begins, the beginning of the great restoration that the son of God will bring.

The primal stories are an eternal message about the deepest elements of our life with God: 1. creation, 2. election, 3. sin, 4. restoration.