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To: Forest Keeper
Please pardon this total aside, but are there female angels in Catholicism? I don't have terribly strong feelings about it either way, but the only ones I can think of that are mentioned in the Bible seem to be male. The truth may be that they are neither, but at least they "appear" to be described as being male.

(Big stuff will have to wait. Big day for me.)

Well, maybe masculine and feminine, who knows? But I don't think male and female created He them. (I could be wrong. All those little roly-poly baby angels have to come from somewhere ....)

Distinguo: "male" and "female" are about sex and sex is about procreation, and our Lord seems to say the angels in heaven don't do that. "Masculine" and "feminine" are about gender (which I do not use in the debased manner of the current libertine age) of which sex is a, but not the, manifestation. It may be that we come to our appreciation of gender through sex, but that's a matter of pedagogy and not of the thing being learned.

The above is my opinion and I have no authority for it. Certainly "Gabriel" is a masculine name - "mighty man of God", and I know of no feminine names for angels. Angel and the Hebrew word for messenger are masculine.

You now know all I know.

1,338 posted on 05/24/2008 6:27:31 AM PDT by Mad Dawg (Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.)
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To: Mad Dawg; Running On Empty; Kolokotronis
FK: "Please pardon this total aside, but are there female angels in Catholicism? I don't have terribly strong feelings about it either way, but the only ones I can think of that are mentioned in the Bible seem to be male. The truth may be that they are neither, but at least they "appear" to be described as being male."

Distinguo: "male" and "female" are about sex and sex is about procreation, and our Lord seems to say the angels in heaven don't do that.

I agree that angels don't procreate, however, and remembering that I have no firm stance on this, we could also say that God simply chose the sex (gender) of His Son even though no sex was involved. I also am not sure at all that the Incarnation even "counts" as "procreation" :) So, the possibility is that God simply chose for all of His angels to be male. I don't know. :)

1,345 posted on 05/26/2008 4:26:28 AM PDT by Forest Keeper (It is a joy to me to know that God had my number, before He created numbers.)
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