On hat-doffing, in the Catholic Herald

A Roman sacrifice: the (male) priest has covered his head.

This weekend I have a letter in the Catholic Herald about hats.

I've written about headcoverings in church here, and the decline of hats in fashion here.

What I didn't mention in the letter is that the view I put forward in it, which I think is overwhelmingly plausible--that the discipline on head-coverings in the primitive Church was at the time a counter-cultural sign, as a reversal of Jewish practice--contradicts the standard narrative explaining why Catholic women are no long obliged to cover their heads in church today. This view found its way into the 1976 Instruction of the CDF, Inter insignores: that St Paul's stern demand that what he describes as a universal custom among Christians was 'probably inspired by the customs of the period', or, more simply, was a 'cultural fact'.

Easter Vigil at St Mary Moorfields

The LMS-organised Easter Vigil service in London, at St Mary Moorfields, was celebrated by Fr Michael Cullinan, with Fr Christoper Basden (of St Bede's, Clapham Park) as Deacon and preacher, and Fr Patrick Hayward as Subdeacon. Cantus Magnus under Matthew Schellhorn accompanied.

What happened to hats? Christian Dior speaks

Bishop Cunningham was too polite to notice, but others did.

Reposted from March 2015.
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A short time ago I published a position paper on head coverings in church. In the Church's tradition, going back to the Apostles, men uncover their heads, and women cover them, during the liturgy. Men removing their hats is still demanded throughout the Church in practice: deviation from the custom is noted with a degree of shock. The custom of women covering them is widely, if not universally, observed in the context of the Traditional Mass, as well as being maintained in the Eastern Churches, but is seen in the Ordinary Form only when grand weddings demand hats for the ladies.

A complicating cultural factor is the disappearance, to an overwhelming extent, of headcoverings for both sexes in everyday life in Western fashion. This means that the liturgical custom looks like more of a big deal for women (who have to do something unusual: cover their heads), and less of a big deal for men (who just remain bare-headed), when for most of the history of the Church it was the other way round. Women simply kept on the headscarves, bonnets, veils, or hats, of their era, but men had to dandle their caps and hats in their hands or find a place to put them down or hang them up, no matter how cold the church was. This is why the Position Paper insisted on looking at the custom from the point of view of both sexes, and not just address the question: Why do (some) women cover their heads at the Traditional Mass?

Mantilla featured in Diocesan magazine

The new edition of the Portsmouth diocesan periodical, the Portsmouth People, has a lady in a mantilla on its front cover. On examinining the photo credits, it appears that she is attending Mass in Erbil, Iraq. It is linked to a story about refugees.

The Catholics of the Middle East have been more faithful to their traditions that the Catholics in the comfortable West. But those attached to the Traditional Mass are doing their best.

See the Position Paper about headcoverings at Mass here, an introduction to its arguments here, and a discussion of the shared custom of headcoverings with Islam here.

Here's a quotation from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, itself quoted by Pope Benedict in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.

As from time immemorial, so too in the future, it is necessary to maintain the principle that “each particular Church must be in accord with the universal Church not only regarding the doctrine of the faith and sacramental signs, but also as to the usages universally received from apostolic and unbroken tradition.  These are to be observed not only so that errors may be avoided, but also that the faith may be handed on in its integrity, since the Church’s rule of prayer (lex orandi)corresponds to her rule of faith (lex credendi).

The customs of women covering their heads, and until recently far more burdonsomely, of men uncovering their heads, is not just of Apostolic tradition, it is actually commanded forecfully in Scripture (1 Cor 11:3-4, 6). To say that it is unfortunate that we don't follow this tradition more widely today is an understatment.

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Doubts about Alice von Hildebrand on the sacredness of women

Mantillas at St David's, Pantasaph, during the St Catherine's Trust Summer School

Regular readers will know that I am just as happy criticising allies as criticising opponents; I think people who are 'on the side of the angels', and those influenced by them, are just as much in need of having their ideas refined in the furnace of reasoned discussion as those who are completely wrong-headed. So in this spirit I wanted to say something about Alice von Hildebrand, who is having an influence, in particular, on discussions of head-coverings for women in church, as I promised when I posted a video about mantillas in which her views (though not her name) are mentioned.

Not long ago I read her short book Man and Woman: A Divine Invention, where these topics are discussed. She is in favour - as am I - of head coverings for ladies in church, and she appears to give a theoretical basis for the practice which bypasses the embarrassing (to many) stuff in St Paul about women being 'under authority', which he tells us is a central symbolic meaning of the veil (1 Cor. 11:10).

This may seem convenient, but in fact it is problematic, since she is constructing a theology of the complementarity of the sexes and St Paul's treatment is the treatment of complementarity in sacred Scripture. Furthermore, she provides her readers with no resources to deal with St Paul's difficult passages. Instead, bypassing the issue of authority, she wants to talk about superiority, and tells her readers that women are superior to men ('this superiority is mostly a moral one', p73).

Video on mantillas

There are a good many videos like this, but this is new and nicely done by the Catholic News Service.

The young lady in the middle who says that women are special because unlike men they can be touched by God, when they conceive a baby, has been reading (or at least influenced by) Alice von Hildebrand. I'm not convinced by this argument, and I might address it on this blog at some point.

Right now I'm trying to catch up with normal life after the Chartres Pilgrimage! Photos and reports of that soon.



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The Complementarity of the sexes: embarassing but indispensible

Nuptial Blessing: much of it given to the Bride alone. Complementarity, not symmetry.

The complementarity of the sexes is is beautifully illustrated by men taking their hats off, and women putting hats or mantillas on, in church: there is a difference between them. This is the basic point of the Position Paper on Headcovings which I've introduced on Rorate Caeli and discussed on this blog yesterday. This symbolic role, however, is part of the reason why liberals don't like the practice: they don't want to hear about complentarity. They want 'gender' to be a social construct, which ought to be a personal choice, and irrelevant to what one does in life.

Now, people have begun to notice that same-sex marriage is very difficult to resist if you accept contraception. Accept that sex, and indeed marriage, needn't have any connection with procreation, and it becomes impossible to explain what is wrong with homosexual sex, and homosexual marriage. The resistance of Evangelical Christians to SSM is, therefore, very difficult to maintain. Well, we have resisted that concession, so perhaps we are ok.

Headcoverings: a new Position Paper from the FIUV

Today I am publishing a Position Paper on head covering in church: go over to Rorate Caeli to read it. This post is by way of some additional commentary on the subject.

The issue of ladies covering their heads in church may seem like a hornet's nest that we should just avoid kicking. For peculiar personal reasons the very idea causes apoplexy among some older, liberal women. It makes the traditional movement seem not just old-fashioned but wedded to an anti-feminist set of ideas which puts it beyond the pale of civilised discussion for great sections of the population. The idea that there might be some kind of moral pressure, if only from the example of others, on women new to the Traditional Mass that they adorn themselves with some absurd lace article, is obviously going to put loads of people right off the whole thing. So why don't we just shut up about it? That would obviously include not continuing the practice, since it is the very sight of women and girls in these things which draws attention to it first and foremost.

How to respond to Islam: a reply to Geoffrey Sales

Ladies wearing mantillas at the St Catherine's Trust Summer School in Wales

Over on 'All Along the Watchtower' the blogger Geoffrey Sales has done me the honour of responding, mostly positively, to my short series of posts about Islam. My argument concluded with the suggestion that, if we want try to make the point that we aren't part of the decadent West, which revivalist Muslims (not just the really crazy ones), and the rising Hindus, Buddhists, and Pentecostalists, quite rightly reject, then we could try restoring the use of head coverings by Catholic women in church.

This would signal a rejection of both decadent sexual mores and of the attack on the difference between the sexes.

Contemplate the likelihood of this happening any time soon, and you will glimpse the depth of the problem.

Geoffrey Sales, though, is having none of it. He remarks:

Best of luck with that one – bound to work, make ourselves look more like the Taliban rather than challenging Islam with the Gospel Truth.

One the one hand, as I indicated there is going to be huge resistance to the restoration of head coverings precisely because it is instinctively understood as a move away from sexual liberation and the like. But to resist it as because it is in some kind of tension with 'Gospel truth': this just seems bizarre. Sales is a Baptist. He knows as well as I do - surely - that women covering their heads in church is sternly commanded by St Paul (1 Cor 11:5). Was St Paul steering his congregation away from 'Gospel truth'? Those who founded the Baptist tradition insisted on head coverings for women in church: were they against 'Gospel truth'? Was everyone in the Christian tradition against 'Gospel truth' up until the 20th century?

What I can't help wondering is that, despite engaging with my general argument that the Christians of the West have made a great mistake in throwing their lot in with a set of Western values which, on any mainstream religious view, are grossly decadent, Mr Sales remains attracted by the idea that by becoming decadent, by leaving behind the Gospel message as our ancestors of all times until less than a century ago understood it (fifty years ago for Catholics), we've become more faithful to the 'real Jesus' or some tripe like that. That, in short, a bit of decadence is actually a good thing.

But let's examine what Mr Sales balks at: doing something which gives us something in common with the Taliban (and every practicing Muslim on the planet); in this, he says, we would be making a mistake, because we should be confronting them with the 'Gospel truth'. Where, in fact, the divergence of our customs with theirs has created an obstacle to mutual understanding, we should refuse to reconsider our customs. And this even when this rebellion against this formerly shared custom was in truth a rebellion against a shared understanding, a shared understanding to which we continue to pay lip service. We claim to reject sexual decadence; the Muslims look at our lifestyle, and even the clothing in which we worship God, and draw the perfectly correct conclusion that we may talk the talk but we don't walk the walk.

For we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord: so says St Paul (2 Cor 4:5). This is a saying sometimes seized on by the enemies of Tradition. In this case, the boot is on the other foot. The decadent customs of the West are so important to liberal Christians that they don't want to give them up, whatever the cost for evangelisation. These personal preferences have become more precious than the Gospel message.

Ah but no, Mr Sales might say: what we want to evangelise is a Protestant notion of a completely unincarnated Christian message, a message with no social manifestation, the unvarnished, spiritual, Jesus:

If the Spirit moves you, then you don’t need a head-covering to show it – though, of course, it might lead that way.

Do you think they look like the Taliban? Neither do I. Receiving the 'first blessing' of
Fr Richard Bailey Cong Orat following Mass, at the Summer School.

As well as the sheer inconvenience and embarrassment of doing something which everyone can see flies in the face of the decadent Western lifestyle, there is always this kind of argument to fall back on. We don't want to do anything to show we love and honour God because what's important is that we love and honour God in our hearts - our Faith is purely spiritual. This argument needs only to be stated clearly to show its absurdity.

What strikes me is how often the Church has put herself in this situation.

We have a lot in common with the Orthodox, including the fundamental principles of our liturgical tradition. We don't formally deny those principles, but our worship - outside the places where the Traditional liturgy is celebrated - now looks utterly alien to them, because we have become embarrassed about those principles: the notion of the Mass as a sacrifice, the idea that it is offered to God and not to the congregation, the continuity of the liturgy with all times and places. Most Catholics, most bishops indeed, can't bear any more to worship in a way which actually shows we believe these things; we just write them down in a book and keep that book safely on a shelf, unopened.

We have a lot in common with evangelical Protestants, notably the very high honour Catholic theology gives to Scripture: the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, with a true Divine author, speaking to us today. But though the official documents still say that, we - as a whole, which is to say Catholics of the mainstream - can't actually bring ourselves to live like that, to talk like that, or to do our Biblical scholarship as if that were true. And so what we actually have in common with evangelicals, we hide, we pretend we don't believe.

Our embarrassment about the Tradition has cut us off from so much shared by non-Catholic Christians, and so much that is shared by non-Christian religions. Our modern customs, which appear so indispensable to so many Catholics today, obscure these opportunities for genuine dialogue and witness to the Gospel.

Fifty years ago it may have seemed more important to make ourselves less unacceptable to liberal Protestants  and the secular media, than to maintain some degree of mutual understanding and respect with non-Christians, with the Orthodox, and with 'biblical' Protestants. Now that calculation appears decidedly dated.
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Mantillas: links

Pilgrims on their way to Walsingham with the LMS Pilgrimage, at Oxburgh Hall chapel

I need a place to park links to discussions of mantillas, which Americans call 'chapel veils' for their own inscrutable reasons, so I'm going to use this post, and I hope keep it updated.

The issue of ladies wearing head coverings in church is one of those things which a lot of people, no doubt, expected simply to go away, if it hasn't already. It hasn't, and it isn't. There is a growing revolt by young Catholic women against the attitude that wearing a mantilla in church is freakish. This of course has commercial implications, and I've noticed that it is increasingly easy to buy them. You can, for example, get them in the CTS bookshop outside Westminster Cathedral, and online from Cenacle Books. Cenacle Books right now offers a choice of a dozen. We've come a very long way in the last ten years or so.

I've written about the rationale for mantillas here, and about the question of whether the custom would best be, in the long term, obligatory or just voluntary, here. The latter post has a rather amusing video by a young lady about the importance of mantillas.

I've written about the vitriolic opposition to mantillas by some older women here.

There's a whole blog dedicated to mantillas here - 'Loving Mantillas'.

There's a very interesting article about them here, again by a young Catholic woman. She makes the point that they can be an aid to prayer for the person wearing them, as well as helping to avoid distracting others.

Cardinal Burke makes the point that ladies covering their heads is still 'expected' in the Extraordinary Form.

There's an interesting argument, referring to treatments by a couple of neo-conservatives and lots of authoritative sources, here, that the lifting of the canonical obligation for women to cover their heads in church in the 1983 Code of Canon Law has left intact the custom, which has its own normative force. Unless the Church declares that the custom is abrogated, women are, therefore, still obliged to wear mantillas (or something else). Obviously, this argument applies just as much to the Novus Ordo.

Something else which is perhaps worth saying is that the custom was the women wore mantillas (or something) when men took off their hats. (This means 'in church', not just 'during Mass'.) One of the side-issues of the question is that the decline of hat-wearing by both sexes has made the parallel between the obligation on each sex less clear. Men don't have to take off their hats because, generally speaking, they aren't wearing them in the first place. Women can't just keep them on, for the same reason.

Here's the informative discussion on Fish Eaters.

As a matter of interest, since the English translation of the 1917 Code is not online, this is what that code's canon 1262 had to say.

1. It is desirable that, consistent with ancient discipline, women be separated from men in church.

2. Men, in a church or outside a church, while there are assisting at sacred rites, shall be bare-headed, unless the approved mores of the people or peculiar circumstances of things determine otherwise; women, however, shall have a covered head and be modestly dressed, especially when they approach the table of the Lord.

I have seen men and women sit on different sides of a church, in Tanzania. I get the impression that this hasn't been widely done in Europe for a long time, but I may be wrong.
Theee are lots of personal testimonies from women about why they like mantillas; here's new one: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/02/why-i-wear-the-mantilla

Loving Mantillas: brilliant idea for a blog

http://lovingmantillas.blogspot.co.uk/

Mantillas arouse strong feelings; I've done a post on the rationale here.

It is of course a tradition endorsed in the strongest terms by St Paul: I Cor 11.5

'But every woman praying or prophesying with her head not covered, disgraceth her head'

It is common to say that St Paul was simply reflecting the social mores of his day, but he has an elaborate theological rationale for his position, while those rejecting it appear ... simply to be reflecting the social mores of their day. Or else are reacting to some kind of childhood trauma - some older women start jabbering about officious nuns putting hankies on their heads if they went to church without a mantilla, as if they were recalling an episode of water-boarding from Guantanamo Bay. There was a remarkable example in Fr Ray Blake's combox the other week, there is a reference to Kleenex being put on girls' heads, but the position is backed up as follows:

As for Paul, yes, what he wrote about a lot of things is "inspired" but sorry, his "opinions" on social conditions of the day and social norms as he wanted them to be are NOT "gospel." They are HIS OPINIONS - he even says so himself. I find his "reasoning" on a lot of these things are lacking in logic and reason. Frankly, I don't know that the men of the day liked him either -- starting with the two disciples he told to go get circumcised to go preach. Like he couldn't find any former Jewish men to do that, or do it himself? They should have told him to go take a hike. I don't have to kiss his patootie regards his opinions on the social structure 2000 years ago. And I refuse to do so. 
Well, St Paul wasn't just 'inspired', the writings of Scripture are literally inspired, they have a Divine author who doesn't make mistakes. And on the subject of head coverings St Paul does not say it is his own opinion; on the contrary,

If any one is disposed to be contentious, we recognize no other practice, nor do the churches of God. (1 Cor 11.16)

Venerating a relic of Bl Dominic Barberi at the Summer School

I've no reason to doubt the existence of wicked nuns, as well as good ones, and other officious women in the decades before I was born, and the damage they did in their day, but future generations can't be expected to have their lives and devotions determined by them one way or another. Young Catholic ladies are rediscovering the mantilla; the traumatised older generation are going to have to grin and bear it.

Why should ladies wear mantillas in church?

Mary O'Regan of The Path Less Taken has posted about an amusing video from a young trad in America about different ways of wearing a mantilla. It is charming, but the explanation, in the middle of the video, of the meaning of the practice is a bit odd. It is odd because it makes no reference to the authoritative discussion in Scripture (St Paul), and its relationship with the Scriptural rationale is unclear.

This young lady's explanation is two-fold: it stops others in the congregation being distracted by female hair, and it is like the veil worn by a bride, and so suggests the union of the soul with Christ. The first part might have some application. The second doesn't make sense on its own, for it invites two questions which aren't answered: why do brides wear veils? and why don't men?

Family Retreat at the Oratory School 2012

St Paul has this to say, in 1 Corinthians, 11.3ff

But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. [4] Every man praying or prophesying with his head covered, disgraceth his head. [5] But every woman praying or prophesying with her head not covered, disgraceth her head: for it is all one as if she were shaven. [6] For if a woman be not covered, let her be shorn. But if it be a shame to a woman to be shorn or made bald, let her cover her head. [7] The man indeed ought not to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. [8] For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. [9] For the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man. [10] Therefore ought the woman to have a power over her head, because of the angels. [11] But yet neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord. [12] For as the woman is of the man, so also is the man by the woman: but all things of God. [13] You yourselves judge: doth it become a woman, to pray unto God uncovered? [14] Doth not even nature itself teach you, that a man indeed, if he nourish his hair, it is a shame unto him? [15] But if a woman nourish her hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given to her for a covering. 

The passages of Scripture which we find embarrassing are among the most important, because they are saying something we have not integrated into our lives. If we are embarrassed by this, then we need to examine ourselves.

What St Paul is saying is that the difference between the sexes symbolises the relationship between God and Creation. It goes naturally with Ephesians 5.22ff.

[22] Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: [23] Because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the saviour of his body. [24] Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things. [25] Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it: 

The complementarity of the sexes, about which we hear so much in the context of Catholic opposition both to same-sex marriage and to the ordination of women, must have some determinate content. What exactly is this complementarity? How does it manifest itself? What is the difference between the sexes? This is St Paul's answer: as God has authority over creation, and as Christ sacrificed himself for mankind, so the husband has authority over the family, and must sacrifice himself, at need, for it. As the Church is the body of Christ, which He loves as Himself, so the feminine principle, represented by the wife, represents the body, or the heart, of the family, which the husband must view as his own body.

This is related of course to the issue of female servers at Mass: the Position Paper on that has a lot more to say. It should not be seen as a negative thing for women: women can more perfectly represent the spousal character of the Church, which is why Our Lady is a symbol of the Church, and why only women can be consecrated virgins. (Thus the parallel with bridal apparel appealed to in the video does, in fact, make sense.) Again, the bride is the recipient of the wonderful blessings given in the traditional Nuptial Mass, because she represents the family: in blessing her, the priest is blessing the family as a whole. This role of representing the family, the Church, society, and creation, is at the heart of the notion of Christian chivalry, the honouring and protection of women as a way of honouring and protecting the world. It is because men can more perfectly represent Christ, on the other hand, that we have a male clergy.

It is interesting to note that in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church complementarity is not mentioned in the discussion of marriage, and a quotation from Ephesians on the subject of marriage cuts out what St Paul says about it (1616). It IS mentioned in the discussion of the Sixth Commandment (2333), and it is emphasised that homosexual relationships lack the complementarity that the Catechism recognises is an essential part of marital relationships (2357). It might appear that while the notion of complementarity is necessary in dealing with the challenge of homosexuality, it is still best to say as little as possible about it. To put it mildly, this does not put the Church in the best possible position to deal with the challenges of today. It is time to re-appropriate this essential teaching, and time that it be reflected publicly also, by ladies wearing mantillas in church. Veiled ladies and bare-headed men in church is an iconographic representation of the Church's teaching on the complementarity of the sexes; and boy, do we need that teaching today.

Mantillas: Cardinal Burke speaks

The canonist Edward Peters has a quotation from a letter from Cardinal Burke, the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, which has something both good and sensible on the subject of ladies wearing mantillas in church.

“Thank you for your letter …The wearing of a chapel veil for women is not required when women assist at the Holy Mass according to Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. It is, however, the expectation that women who assist at the Mass according to the Extraordinary Form cover their heads, as was the practice at the time that the 1962 Missale Romanum was in force. It is not, however a sin to participate in the Holy Mass according to the Extraordinary Form without a veil.”

I've argued before that bringing back the obligation to wear a head covering would be a good idea - though I'm not expecting it to happen any time soon.

Communicants on Maundy Thursday at St William of York, Reading.

The American habit of calling mantillas 'chapel veils' reminds me of a poem by GK Chesterton, 'A Ballad of Abreviations':

The American’s a hustler, for he says so,
And surely the American must know.
He will prove to you with figures why it pays so
Beginning with his boyhood long ago.
When the slow-maturing anecdote is ripest
He’ll dictate it like a Board of Trade Report,
And because he has no time to call a typist,
He calls her a Stenographer for short.

Mantillas

Students waiting to receive communion at the St Catherine's Trust Summer School 2009.
The photo was taken by Emma Duggan.

Fr Z is conducting a poll on whether the custom of ladies wearing mantillas (which Americans call chapel veils, for some reason) - or some other head covering - in church should be revived. It is overwhelmingly in favour so far -

Vote here: http://bit.ly/eBmzcH

Voters can say whether it should be voluntary or obligatory; unsurprisingly perhaps the voluntary option is the most popular. On reflection however this doesn't really make sense.

First, it is already voluntary. If you want to revive it you have to change its legal status. It was obligatory from Apostolic times until the 1983 Code of Canon Law, and it is an anomaly, historically speaking, that this obligation was removed.

Secondly, things which are 'obligatory' in church law are not exactly enforced, or even consistently promulgated. How many people know about the obligation of Friday penance? How many receive communion only in a state of grace? To say it should be obligatory is not to suggest women not covering their heads should be whipped out of church.

Thirdly, and this is the crux of it, right now women who choose to cover their heads are actively persecuted by the usual liberal fascists. They get funny looks; priests tell them they are drawing attention to themselves; they are accused of spiritual pride and all the rest of it. One young woman I know started going to the Traditional Mass because only there could she 'get away with' wearing a mantilla. You get the same thing when people want to receive communion kneeling, or when priests prefer not to concelebrate. The only way to protect good practice against social pressure of this kind is to make it obligatory. And if it is a pious practice, what could be the objection?

Even that is not enough, of course - people have become so used to liturgical abuses they criticize people who want to follow the law. But it would be a step in the right direction.

Finally, the main reason give against making it obligatory is actually a reason in favour. The reason is this: many women don't feel comfortable wearing a mantilla. Why not? The discomfort comes from their not being used to it, and to it looking like a big 'statement'. If it were an obligation, it wouldn't be such a statement, and they would get used to it. And so this pious practice would become 'doable' once more for the great majority.

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