Why must we refer to God as "He"?

[Clare]

Will this theologian be referring to the devil in a gender-neutral way?

[elizabee]

He can't be claiming to write a Catholic book if he's entertaining that nonsense.

Can you please explain this? The above statement can easily lend itself to serious misunderstanding, even blasphemy. At first blush, I read the above as saying that God needs to conform to the standards of the Catholic Church in order to reveal Scripture.

Of course He doesn't, but He has revealed Himself the way He has. I'm just saying that you can't be on the one hand disobedient to Revelation and on the other hand claiming to be writing a Catholic book. SmileBug said the book isn't about the sex issue at all, that it's a book about something else in which the author decided to not call God "He". I am saying you can no longer call that Catholic theology.
So basically, authors need to conform to the standards of the Catholic church in order to call their works Catholic.

[Felix]

God as Creator is the Active Principle of Everything. So, Active=Father=Masculine!

Well, that was more or less the explanation I heard four years ago from a wise jesuit, Fr. Manuel Carreira.

Obviously the answer was far better 

[alaric]

Will this theologian be referring to the devil in a gender-neutral way?

Oh no, no we can't have that...........

Lucifer will always be  dude..........usually an angry white guy with a pointy tale and goat-tee. .

[SmileBugMK]

Update:  The gender-neutral language is out of the book!

[RalphKramden]

To be gender neutral we'd have to say "Our Parent" and there lacks a poetic ring, among other things.

you kill me

[Scipio_a]

And of course Jesus taught us to call God "Our Father..." To be gender neutral we'd have to say "Our Parent" and there lacks a poetic ring, among other things.

I love simple, straight forward arguments like this....I mean...what a smack down!!