“The Church has no official commentary on Scripture. The pope could write one if he wanted, but he hasn’t. And with good reason: Scripture study is an ongoing, developing field. To create an official commentary on Scripture would impede the development of this field.” Catholic AnswersWhat are they scared of?
“What are they scared of?”
More to the point, why do care what the RCC teaches about the Bible. I find it quite telling that like secular leftists, there are a few Protestants that obsess over the teachings of the RCC. A mindset that would be upset over the RCC’s teachings on Mary, etc., is the same mindset that would be upset if someone denied climate change.
It's really funny to see this canard, too, since I found out about this commentary well before ever becoming Catholic. In fact, it was in the library at the college I attended along with other Protestant commentaries.
As I understand it, the entire set is being reprinted in English in a leather bound set and the portions related to he NT have usually been in print for the past hundred years. The portion related to the four Gospels, for example, is available as a set for about $150 on Amazon and I've been told they're available for considerably less in paperback.
Availble in paperback and as free ebooks
At the time I plucked this link, available in "56 formats and editions" on Amazon.
Given that you can get them for free on the web as a text or .pdf download (along with, I think, all the rest), I doubt there are many sets sold other than to parish libraries, seminaries, and so on.
Even in the Internet age, there truly are none so blind as those who will not see.
Let the dog and pony show about whether it's "official" or only "officially approved of" begin. But whatever you call it, if it's in there, it's acceptable to the Magisterium of the Church as is everything in "Haydock's Notes" on the Douy-Rheims Bible (also available in a number of formats as well as free to download or read on-line).
You, yourself, lodge essentially the same objection in regard to, e.g., Joel Osteen!
Why would you think the Vatican should produce a Bible commentary with a single dogmatically-defined interpretation of every verse? It would lock interpreters into a box and end most Biblical scholarship. It's not our teaching model -- which is usually negative, defining orthodoxy's boundaries and allowing freedom within those boundaries -- anyway.
But that would hinder the great liberty RCs have to wrest Scripture to support Rome when even she does not officially do so, which they can broadly do within the parameters of RC teaching.
“The liberty of the Scripture interpreter remains extensive. Taking due consideration of the factors that influence proper exegesis, the Catholic Bible interpreter has the liberty to adopt any interpretation of a passage that is not excluded with certainty by other passages of Scripture, by the judgment of the magisterium, by the Church Fathers, or by the analogy of faith. That is a great deal of liberty, as only a few interpretations will be excluded with certainty by any of the four factors circumscribing the interpreter’s liberty ” Jimmy Akin,, Catholic Answers
Others also hold that most of what Catholics believe and practice today has never been stated infallibly.
Of course, what really is infallibly and what is "official" or an "authentic interpretation" and which parts are can vary from RC to RC.
One told me he would not believe anything unless it was from the Vatican site, while another just rejected that as the approved teaching of Rome when it provides liberal scholarship on the Bible. Another invokes the catechism, but another says not all of it accurately teaches truth. Another invoked the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur as providing assurance, and others disparage it as doing so.
the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur given for a reason, and have a history going way back to the Index, and are meaningless if they carry no weight and provide no assurance from the RCC.
But if these constitute any sanction at all, or if inclusion in a Catholic Bible (for America) infers any approval (and seeing as the murdered men over notes in that past then it must), then the commentary you may be looking for has been published for decades in the Catholic New American Bible, though it has had and will have some revisions. See here And which notes the Vatican's own site provides, some examples of which Greetings_Puny_Humans previously provided, if not the Bible helps most of the below is from.
that Genesis 2 (Adam and Eve and creation details) and Gn. 3 (the story of the Fall), Gn. 4:1-16 (Cain and Abel), Gn. 6-8 (Noah and the Flood), and Gn. 11:1-9 (Tower of Babel: the footnotes on which state, in part, “an imaginative origin of the diversity of the languages among the various peoples inhabiting the earth”) are “folktales,” using allegory to teach a religious lesson. the story of Balaam and the donkey and the angel (Num. 22:1-21; 22:36-38) was a fable, while the records of Gn. (chapters) 37-50 (Joseph), 12-36 (Abraham, Issaac, Jacob), Exodus, Judges 13-16 (Samson) 1Sam. 17 (David and Goliath) and that of the Exodus are stories which are "historical at their core," but overall the author simply used mere "traditions" to teach a religious lesson.
Think of the ‘holy wars’ of total destruction, fought by the Hebrews when they invaded Palestine. The search for meaning in those wars centuries later was inspired, but the conclusions which attributed all those atrocities to the command of God were imperfect and provisional." It also holds that such things as “cloud, angels (blasting trumpets), smoke, fire, earthquakes,lighting, thunder, war, calamities, lies and persecution are Biblical figures of speech.”
On Gn. 1:26 states that “sometimes in the Bible, God was imagined as presiding over an assembly of heavenly beings who deliberated and decided about matters on earth,” thus negating this as literal, and God as referring to Himself in the plural (“Us” or “Our”) which He does 6 times in the OT.
Likewise, the current footnote regarding the Red Sea (Ex. 10:19) informs readers regarding what the Israelites crossed over that it is literally the Reed Sea, which was “probably a body of shallow water somewhat to the north of the present deep Red Sea.” Thus rendered, the miracle would have been Pharaoh’s army drowning in shallow waters!
It likewise explains as regards to the sons of heaven [God] having relations with the daughters of men, as “apparently alluding to an old legend.” and explains away the flood as a story that “ultimately draws upon an ancient Mesopotamian tradition of a great flood.” Its teaching also imagines the story as being a composite account with discrepancies. The 1970 footnote on Gen. 6:1-4 states, “This is apparently a fragment of an old legend that had borrowed much from ancient mythology.” It goes on to explain the “sons of heaven” are “the celestial beings of mythology.” - http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Ancients_on_Scripture.html#Remarks .
I also took a look at the Catholic commentary linked in this thread here, and which gives such sure teaching as (concerning the writer of 1 Peter)
Yet it is unlikely that Peter addressed a letter to the Gentile churches of Asia Minor while Paul was still alive. This suggests a period after the death of the two apostles, perhaps A.D. 70-90. The author would be a disciple of Peter in Rome, representing a Petrine group that served as a bridge between the Palestinian origins of Christianity and its flowering in the Gentile world.