I understand that Fisheaters is controversial on Cathinfo - and I do not frequent that website myself, any longer (I got barred from Fisheaters just quoting St. Augustine - lol).  They do have a pretty good section regarding astrology and astrological symbols vs Traditional Catholicism...here's the link:

https://www.fisheaters.com/astrologybackground.html

I found it very interesting.

https://www.fisheaters.com/astrologybackground.html

I found it very interesting.

So did I, particularly the divisions into fire, air, earth and water. For those who haven't read it, this is the crux of it:

....a Catholic may believe that "the stars" influence us, and he can be perfectly orthodox while doing so. It is perfectly licit to cast a natal chart to try to determine the planetery influences that may affect your inclinations. What is forbidden is the casting of charts to foretell the future as if it's cast in stone by the stars (a form of divination), or to believe in any form of astrology that denies free will.

I have seen it in my own life. My own family (my parents and siblings) - all 9 of them are influenced by water or earth signs - with the exception of me. I am influenced by fire and air. Is it any wonder then that I am a misfit in my family. Nobody understands me :sad:

In the case of my own family (spouse and children) we are all influenced by fire, air or a combination of fire and air. So it seems that unconsciously I chose to marry a man who suited me well and we had children of similar bent.   Earth needs water and fire needs air. Very interesting indeed, but it doesn't take away any free will.

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?
  
  -------
  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").