While the Catholic Church has not excluded a literalist reading of the accounts of creation in the book of Genesis, it is true that the Church has been open to interpretations that include some symbolism in the accounts. This does not mean that the Church believes that the Bible is “lying,” only that the sacred author of Genesis may have chosen to tell his story in a poetic fashion by, for example, using days to symbolize the stages of creation. The Church teaches that the Bible is true in all that it intends to teach as true. In the case of the creation accounts, the sacred author was not interested in creating a scientific treatise but in composing an account of creation that attributed it to God and his omnipotence.
