Expert: Fr. Michael - 1/27/2012

Question
Good day, Father Michael! This is a multi-part question. I hope that's okay.

I am writing a historical novel set in early 19th century Charleston, South Carolina. Many of my characters are immigrants (from France and Ireland) and Catholic. I grew up Protestant, so I'm doing my research, but there are a few questions I can't pin down which I'm hoping you can help me with.

1. In the early 1800's, a Catholic church choir would consist only of boys?

2. I thought at one point I'd read that the congregation would be separated, that men and women would sit on different sides of the aisle, but I may be remembering wrong.

3. In traditional Catholicism, are angels male, or at least androgynous? The context is, if a woman devotes herself to charitable works, would a Catholic person compliment her by calling her an angel, or would this be inappropriate?

Thank you so much for taking time out of what I am sure is a busy schedule to answer such questions for us.

Elyse

Answer
1) Males, not necessarily boys, the one exception being nuns' choirs, where obviously there cannot be males.
2) In some countries, the separation was observed in Catholic churches, just as it is in orthodox Jewish congregations to this day.
3) Angels by their created nature have no gender.  The archangels that are named (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael) are represented as male.  This may be for the reason that in the Biblical languages the word for "angel" has a masculine grammatical gender.  Calling a human being of either gender an angel is obviously a metaphor.  Angels and mankind are two separate orders of creation and cannot be interchanged.  Human beings can never actually become angels.