It may amaze you to realize that Catholics are taught to believe that the Torah was dictated by God. Evidently you weren't taught that. Shame on us.
So, just what parts of the Bible do Catholics have official permission to believe nowadays?
Only all of it. We cannot believe any more Bible than there actually is.
You mean the Catholic Church has not yet cast Exodus into the garbage heap along with Genesis? Wow. I'm pleasantly surprised.
It may amaze you to realize that Catholics are taught to believe that the Torah was dictated by God. Evidently you weren't taught that. Shame on us.
The so-called "Rite of the Chrstian Initiation of Adults" teaches practically nothing. And if it did, it would do so the way Catholics have been "teaching" Protestants for going on 500 years: saying "we were here first," saying "we're infallible," and then quoting some archaic saint or pope or church father to show he believed in purgatory/Mary/images whatever. Basic Protestant assumptions, which are 180 degrees removed from those of Catholicism, are never dealt with. Those three magical assertions are supposed to make everything all hunky dory. They don't. They simply, in Protestant eyes, deprive chrstianity of all the reasons Protestants think chrstianity ever existed in the first place. Hint: Not only your purgatory, but your idea of "heaven" is alien to Protestants.
I was forced on my own to do a lot of reading to answer the questions I had, and it led to nothing but torment, as none of the answers ever made any sense. I specifically investigated the Catholic doctrine of inspiration and read that dictation was heretical, as was its counterpart on the left, "mere assistance." This makes the "true" Catholic understanding of inspiration fit into a huge spectrum of nothingness, minus the only two understandings that actually say something. So yes, I do not believe Catholics believe, or even are allowed to believe, in "dictation" of the Torah.
And I will tell you something else: I'm sick and tired of "conservative" Catholics like yourself claiming to believe in "dictation" and yet never uttering one peep of protest when your co-religionists blatantly deny or laugh at the notion that the story of the Flood might actually be true. Where are you, MarkBsner? Over somewhere hiding in the corner, looking at your watch and pretending it didn't happen?
If Catholics believe the scriptures are "dictated," then why are the vast majority of Catholic bibles edited with higher critical commentary that accepts the documentary hypothesis and labels Genesis as a mixture of Babylonian and Canaanite mythology? Why is that? Do you care to perhaps answer that question, or have you suddenly thought of something you need to be doing waaaaay over there somewhere?
I'm sick and tired of it. Either defend the Bible to your co-religionists or stop making absurd claims about believing the Bible is "dictated" or even "true" an any sense but a "santa claus" sense!
So, just what parts of the Bible do Catholics have official permission to believe nowadays?
Only all of it. We cannot believe any more Bible than there actually is.
Oh really? Well, here is an article posted by a co-religionist of yours and written by another which insists that G-d did not "really" command the extermination of the Canaanites (men, women, children, and animals) because that would be mean, and since He is bound by "natural law," G-d can't do anything "mean," so therefore the books of both Deuteronomy and Joshua are in error in claiming doing so was G-d's will.
Do you care to make a comment? Do you care to defend the integrity of the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua on that thread? No? Oh, something suddenly came up.
Please cease these absurd and patently false claims that Catholics "believe" the Bible. At the very least don't cry and moan because I disproved your assertions to your face.
Courtesy ping to NYer.