I understand it well enough, but it's still a serious problem and it doesn't just affect Catholic and Orthodox believers, it's actually rampant, perhaps even more so if that's possible, within the mainline Protestant Churches as well. The problem stems from an adherence to Church doctrine, of whatever stripe, above an adherence to intellectual honesty as it pertains to the Scriptures. I say that not in an accusing manner though, but with an understanding that a reluctance to examine one's own cherished beliefs is natural and incredibly hard to overcome. Furthermore, it's not something that is solely limited to Catholic or Orthodox believers, or even Christians in general, but that it's a human trait present in all groups and across all religions. It doesn't make it any easier to deal with, but I do understand where it comes from.
All this is very true, but you're missing a couple of points. First, liberal mainline Protestant churches don't claim to be divinely-guided institutions with an unchanged and unchanging doctrine. The Catholics and Orthodox do. Furthermore Catholics and Orthodox believe in plenty of things just as "impossible" as the events of Genesis 1-11 yet they insist on them as dogmas while dismissing Genesis. Why do they do this?
I'll tell you why. It's sociology; nothing more, nothing less. They don't accept Genesis because Genesis is for "those people;" you know the ones. Inbred, bad teeth, live in trailer parks, their parents are siblings??? No one wants to be associated with those awful sub-human creatures, so Genesis is didactic mythology. Meanwhile Mary made the sun dance in Portugal in 1917, because that's different. That's a good "intellectual" miracle. Not like that Adam and Eve nonsense.
Do you see what I am getting at? Catholics and Orthodox, who represent the historical version of the chr*stian religion so under attack by liberals, join those liberals in attacking the most loyal chr*stians in the world because they're not "their kind of people." It's absolutely disgusting. Why should any Catholic or Orthodox chr*stian complain about liberal "chr*stophobia" when they treat their alleged "co-religionists" that way?
To be fair, the reason all Fundamentalist Protestants--who ordinarily can't agree on anything--all interpret Genesis 1-11 identically is also sociology. So it works both ways.
I don't know how long you've been on FR, but if you're new, you're going to be very hurt at seeing your "co-religionists" use the exact same language and terminology for you as the atheists and liberals do. And this from churches allegedly run directly from heaven. No wonder we're in such a mess.
Finally, the Catholic/Orthodox war on fundamentalism has made it possible for all religion to be written off as subjective ethno-cultural folklore which no one (except for "fanatics") takes seriously any more. Do you honestly think for one minute that we would be living in a world where people automatically dismiss "religion" as the grounds for any moral position whatsoever if Catholicism and Orthodoxy hadn't been waging war against those awful "fundamentalists" for decades? No. This is their fault. And they deserve the disasters their churches are going through.
Once upon a time it was understood that believing in a religion meant believing it was actually true in the mundane, factual sense of the word. Thanks to redneck-hating chr*stians we now live in a world where no one except dangerous lunatics believe such a thing.
May their pernicious souls rot half a grain a day.