The Trouble with Angels

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them . . . and they were sore afraid ... And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke: 2:9, 13-14

Everybody knows the scene: the star-tied shepherds on the hillside looking up, awestruck, to a bright cloud in which floats a bevy of willowy women, winged, golden-haired and equipped with elongated trumpets. These, naturally, are angels. Or are they? In the current issue of the Roman Catholic monthly The Sign, Benedictine Father Kilian McDonnell vehemently protests against these treacly travesties--the reason, he says, that no one takes angels seriously any more.

Father McDonnell does not object to giving angels human bodies, or even wings. "But we do object to the portrayal of angels as harmless, effeminate creatures bored with a purposeless existence. We object to their portrayal as ethereal glamor queens looking pleasantly ineffectual. Though there are no masculine or feminine angels . . . (there can be distinction of sexes only where there are bodies), yet it is not correct to portray angels as women. God has revealed the angels to us in the masculine: Raphael, Michael, Gabriel. By their nature the angels are next to God. They are powerful beings. The German poet Rilke says, 'Their presence is the first degree of the terrible.' " Furthermore, great artists of the past represented angels as "unmistakably masculine and sometimes even a little muscular . . .

"The devils have fared much better at the hands of the artists than have their heavenly counterparts, the angels. It is seldom that you see a picture of a sickly-looking devil. Never is he feminine . . . Placing the artists' conception of a devil alongside their conception of an angel makes one wonder whether it is at all possible for good to overcome evil."

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