It has allegorical elements perhaps but we have dogmas if you did not realize:
"For the faithful in Christ cannot accept this view, which holds that either after Adam there existed men on this earth, who did not receive their origin by natural generation from him, the first parent of all; or that Adam signifies some kind of multitude of first parents; for it is by no means apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with what the sources of revealed truth and the acts of the magisterium of the Church teaches about original sin, which proceeds from a sin truly committed by one Adam, and which is transmitted to all by generation, and exists in each one as his own." (Humani Generis, 1950)
"If anyone does not confess that the first man Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost his holiness and the justice in which he had been established, and that he incurred through the offense of that prevarication the wrath and indignation of God and hence the death with which God had previously threatened him, and with death captivity under his power, who thenceforth "had the empire of death" [Heb. 2:14], that is of the devil, and that through that offense of prevarication the entire Adam was transformed in body and soul for the worse, let him be anathema." (Ecumenical Council of Trent, 1546)
We clearly in these and in many other places in the Church affirm a historical Adam and his Fall and that we are his children all of us.
And concerning animals I hold that death entered material creation through humanity, as we were the priests and head of it (I say material for it is known that spiritual death, a falling away from grace, happened before this, but perhaps even all). I hold this in light of Romans 8 and the divinely inspired St. Maximus: "in the beginning sin seduced Adam and persuaded him to transgress God's commandment ... thus condemning our whole human nature to death and, via humanity, pressing the nature of (all) created beings toward mortal extinction." In the man Adam all things died and in the True Man Jesus all things will live. Fr. John Meyendorff expounds on the Patristic thought of recapitulation (even St. Irenaeus of Lyons discusses the matter) saying:
"By his virginal birth, Christ overcomes the opposition of the sexes—In Christ, says Paul, there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:28). By his death and resurrection, Christ destroys the separation that existed since the fall between paradise and the universe. Today you shall be with me in Paradise, says Christ to the good thief (Lk 23:43)—giving to the human race access to the forbidden garden, coming back himself on earth after his resurrection, and showing that in himself paradise and the universe are henceforth one. By his ascension he unites heaven and earth through the exaltation of the human body, co-natural and consubstantial with ours, which he had assumed. By going beyond the angelic orders with his human soul and body, he restores the unity between the worlds of sense and of mind, and establishes the harmony of the whole creation. Finally, as man, he accomplishes in all truth the true human destiny that he himself had predetermined as God, and from which man had turned: he unites man to God."
So is demonstrated even a corruption of the other animals through us.
Now if this is in fact false and they, including our Church, are all in error, I'd like a demonstration of this and Patristic support drawn for it and not a vague reference to parish priests, for I have been under many good priests who were righteous and knowledgeable, and none said what you just said, except what I just said, that we affirm a historical Adam but that Genesis has allegorical elements, although none would affirm a dichotomy between these two things (and none can, for Sarah and Hagar is a history but also a symbol, as St. Paul states, so there is no contradiction between history and a symbol). Patristic support, Magisterial support, that kind of thing. For I must have missed it.
