Why can't we just have the pink and blue colors suffice to show gender here without adding the astrological symbols of mars and venus to everyone's name? With all the occult stuff happening in our society today, it is rather uncomfortable.
"Why"? Perhaps because what was once marketed as "beautiful living
color" might not be the best choice for every CathInfo reader? Not everyone has ideal
color perception. Other people might be reading CathInfo in
black-&-white for its personal advantages, e.g., in visual
contrast. Thanks to Unicode, there are internationally standard codes for the biological symbols, so any monitor with complete-enough fonts can display those symbols, which also include a symbol for "neuter" (reminiscent of a lollypop)[$].
Or perhaps because computer programmers, one of which Matthew has admitted to being, and especially programming-language design-&-implementation specialists like myself, absolutely
love arcane symbols? Most practically, for compactness of expression. Alas, only the programming language APL found much of a constituency for using them, and its symbols were predominately from the religiously unthreatening domain of mathematics.
Really now, if CathInfo members need to distinguish the sex of a business contact bearing an androgynous personal name, e.g., "Taylor"; should they be expected to write out "(female)" instead of scribbling the corresponding biological sign? For that matter, why write out "Sun." for Sunday (vs. "Sat."), when the single ancient symbol "☉" (i.e.: a circle with a centered dot) would suffice?
Oh! It's an alchemical and astrological symbol. Never mind that it, like the 2 symbols initially objected to herein, has a claim to respectability from its adoption by
astronomers if not from printers of
almanacs (notably the eponymous "Poor Richard"). Likewise "Thu." for Thursday (vs. "Tue."), when the Old English letter "Þ" (named
thorn, phonetically the Frenchified-English pair "th").
Oh! It's derived from
Runic letters, which were sometimes used for
fortune-telling, so I suppose all good Catholics should avoid that letter for any purpose at all? It's a wee bit too late to preach that to Old-English scribes of mediaeval manuscripts, in which it's common as the first letter of the definite article "the" ("
þe"), and the demonstrative pronouns "this"("
þis"?) and "that" ("
þæt")[##].
The only arcane symbols for which broad objections seem likely legitimate from a Catholic perspective are the
sigils for
fallen angels, which are used in magic to invoke those angels (who might be practically indistinguishable from
demons [×]). Recall that only Archangel-Saints Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael are mentioned by name in the Bible. Other names entered mediaeval Christian culture from origins in "apocryphal Jєωιѕн books"[†].
But objecting to using
biological symbols for
male &
female? Why stop there? Should CathInfo members
spell out single digit numbers (when not used as pronouns), instead of using the modern digits of Western Civilization? Are we concerned that the available historic record shows those digits to have been devised by
pagan Hindus or Buddhists on the Indian Subcontinent, then tweaked by
infidelinfidel Muslim Arabs- ? It might not be too much longer before someone objects to the Latin letter "N", because apparently prevailing scholarship derives it as an acrophone from the ancient Semitic word nahaš, meaning "snake" (and even poorly catechized CINOs know whom that reptile symbolizes).
Alas, it's more than 130 years too late to seek religious counsel about use of symbols from Abbot Johann "Gregor" Mendel - . So as an instance of charitable & constructive criticism, please consider reading the Catholic Encyclopedia article "Scruple"[**].
Why, yes, I am using this reply to do spot-tests for expansion of Unicode support in the New & Improved CathInfo. How did you guess?
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Note $: Within "Miscellaneous Symbols" (U+2600--26FF), which is also where an adequate approximation for a shamrock ("♣") can be found for this festive octave. Microsoft has supported them at least partially since Word97 and Windows 98 (maybe requiring SE), and codes up to 65535 as its native character set since Windows XP. There are free Unicode fonts "out there" that provide letters & symbols for languages many people have never even heard of. I can't speak to Apple nor Linux support (I wouldn't be surprised if linux has routinely beaten Windows schedules for supporting Unicode). That written, I see that Matthew has chosen to maximize compatibility for CathInfo readers by using tiny image files instead.
Note #: Those [expletives deleted] Muslim Arabs get waaay too much credit for those digits, which were an Indic (i.e., "India Indian") invention. The Arabs were just the last culture to tweak them before acquisition by Christian culture, notably by the monk-scientist Gerbert d'Aurillac, later known as Pope Silvester II (sd. 999--1003): <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14371a.htm> (last sentence; more modern secular sources have more details on him as a scientist & mathematician). Whazzat? We're expected to believe that scientific knowledge in Byzantine-Imperial Constantinople was just chopped liver? Oy vey!
Note ##: The supposedly archaic "ye" is a corruption popularized by printers who would rather be cheap than accurate". The real "ye" was only the 2nd-person plural pronoun. Over time, penmanship declined, and scribes writing a thorn began not bothering to close the bowl in the middle, so that it looked increasingly like a lower-case "y" printed backwards. Considering that the main suppliers of metal fonts were in France and Italy, whose dominant native alphabets had no thorn, printers made the obvious substitution. Thus the modern bogus "Ye Olde [whatever] Shoppe".
Note †: "Angels": <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01476d.htm>.
Note ×: "Fallen Angels" → "Demons": <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04710a.htm>.
Note *: I haven't yet found manuscripts on line that show what symbols Abbot Mendel used, but my search has been only cursory.
Note **: "Scruple": <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13640a.htm>.
Also the name of the apothecary-weight symbol "℈", approximatable by Cyrillic "Э" (i.e., graphically a reversed lunate "E").