Chapel Veil and Cantoring

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Here is a new interesting page on veiling history and its relation to prayer: https://www.prayinglatin.com/veiling/

Has some content towards the end that may even be somewhat shocking to certain modern ears, but all true and fully Catholic nonetheless.
 
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I am 75 & had experience of what life was like before the Council. Woman wore all color veils & in the US, we wore all manner & color of hats. There was no custom as to colors. The important thing was that your head was covered…Yes, as simple as that. If you wanted to enter the Church & you had no head covering, you pulled out a tissue & used that.
 
That, and also from some women who have had it drummed into their heads that wearing a head covering is chauvinist and degrading, who hate hats themselves, especially if they ever ‘had to’ wear them, and look on anybody who thinks differently as ‘dragging us back to the dark ages’. IOW, a lot of emotionalism based on their perceptions.
 
I grew up after the hat, glove and veil era, so nobody was ever forcing me to wear them, and in fact my mother rarely wore those things. I don’t think I ever saw Mom in a veil and rarely saw her in a hat or gloves, maybe like twice. So I don’t have the same baggage associated with them that some of the baby boomers seem to have.
 
Modernist pseudo traditional interpretation. There has never been a justification for wearing headcoverings under the heading of “veiling the sacred” for women up until the 1900’s. That’s 1900 years into Church history. Not traditional at all and actually an insult to people who are sacred who are veiled.
 
Proof please. Remembering, of course, that even if ‘talking about something’ was not seen until year X does not prove it was not spoken or taught before then, see: Immaculate Conception, doctrine of.
 
I assume this is your blog? It’s an interesting piece. I wish you had citations for your assertions (biblical references not withstanding).
 
Having read the Fathers of the Church and medieval writers, I have never seen headcoverings justified by calling merely baptized laywomen sacred. Instead, I have always seen headcoverings justified by biblical discipline or because of modesty due to societal mores or because of more chauvinistic reasons.

Men and women are equally “sacred” by virtue of baptism. Therefore if to be “sacred” means that one must wear a headcovering, then men should wear headcoverings. Women do not achieve their “dignity” by being fertile or by being mysterious or by being the other half of the human race. They possess inherent dignity by virtue of being human beings, members of the same homo sapiens species that men are. Those who are baptized have Christian dignity of being adopted daughters of God, just like men are adopted sons of God by virtue of baptism. So any argument based on “dignity” and “sacredness” will have to actually be based on something other than their being human and baptized for there to be a logical, rational argument for headcoverings on women in today’s world where it is not the mores.
 
I am sure you are very well-read. However, you did not answer what I actually asked, a proof based on an authoritative document that there was not any kind of teaching about women and sacred covering until some time in the recent past.
 
It is not for me to prove the negative. It is for anyone who claims that there IS teaching on the matter to produce texts. Yes, I am well read, yes I am a canon lawyer, yes, I have a special interest in this topic because there are actually sacred women but they are a small minority of the population of Catholic women. Yes, they are given a veil. Yes, it is a sign of being blessed among women. And for women to claim that their mantilla or hat or kercheif or whatever has the same connotation is insulting. I was made a “sacred person” by the ministry of my bishop. Just like priests are made sacred persons by the m inistry of their bishops. Should all men wear chasubles at Mass because they are “sacred”?
 
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It blows me away that you would have to go to war. I guess I am pretty sheltered. In my archdiocese, at the cathedral, the Archbishop himself communes all new converts at the Vigil kneeling and on the tongue. It honestly feels like I’m reading something out of the Twilight Zone when I hear these things being controversial…
 
SerraSemper said:
There has never been a justification for wearing headcoverings under the heading of “veiling the sacred” for women up until the 1900’s … Not traditional at all
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Odd observation. Have you read all Church history references to veiling in their entirety prior to the 1900s? That is also like saying there was never a justification of the Holy Trinity found prior to the 4th century. Obviously, teachings and practices get more thoroughly explained over time, and especially when they start being challenged. It seems there to be a plethora of examples of veiling the sacred as evidenced on that site and for one example, the aspects of virginity and purity are cited by Tertullian as a reason that women veil. A woman’s body being like a tabernacle of new life also seems a fitting reason. But those arguments aside, if one wishes to argue from tradition, as it seems you do, at what point in Catholic history were women not veiled in Church, and do you have any citations prior to the 1960s? 😉
 
mrsdizzyd said:
I assume this is your blog? It’s an interesting piece. I wish you had citations for your assertions (biblical references not withstanding).
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No it is not my blog. It is a website. What assertion specifically did you wish had a citation out of curiosity? Seems from my reading most content would fall under common knowledge such as that Chalices are traditionally veiled, etc. Most of the historical references such as St Linus, Tertullian, and St Clement of Alexandria are all cited.
 
You can invent all kinds of reasons why it is “fitting” for someone to do something. Practically any indifferent action can be “spiritualized”. E.g. Grey is the color of ash. Ash is a sign of humility and repentance. All people must be humble. Therefore, we must all wear clothes that are ash-colored. There. A fitting reason to wear grey continually since we must always be humble in the sight of God and man (and I can quote plenty of scripture to back up the assertion that we must be humble before God). There!

Just because I just made this argument up on the spot in 2019 doesn’t mean that Traditional Catholic men and women must wear grey or else they are not humble in the eyes of God. And am I going to point fingers and say that the Fathers of the Church did speak of this because they spoke of wearing sackcloth and ashes and therefore we know it is traditional to wear grey? No, you’d laugh at me. Or maybe we need to wear grey because it is “fitting” because grey is the color of a dove, and a dove symbolizes theHoly Spirit. I mean, we can go on and on and canonize anything we want, can’t we?

I have never read any scholarly work in any age that actually advocates the wearing of a “headcovering” for women on the basis of their “mystery” or “tabernacle-likeness” or the like in any age of the Church. I have read devotional works that advocate this practice in books and websites that have dated after the 1950’s. The 1950’s! That is almost two millenia after Christianity was founded! So, no, it is not “traditional” in the slightest. It is yet another reason concocted to lure women into believing they are sacred and special and therefore have to wear some kind of headcovering by pointing to things that are sacred and special. Way to go! Let’s spiritualize vanity here.
 
Ack. It will always be beyond me why head-covering threads almost always become contentious. And people wonder why those new to the faith or those interested in starting the devotion come here all neurotic with their questions, despite all those who repeatedly say, “It’s no big deal. No one cares. Do it, or don’t.”
 
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Honestly, I really do not understand why you are getting so upset. Wearing a headcovering historically (depending on the society, the times, and yes, the Church) did not depend on simply one point of view. Plus, you are picking out one tiny portion of the argument and (it seems to me) trying to argue that because there is in literature that you read that was ‘only’ in the 1950s (and which could have existed for centuries before that) a mention that a veil was used to cover the sacred, you seem to imply that people who speak of this as one of many possible reasons to choose to wear a headcovering are using it as the only justification. I do not believe that is the case.
 
Wait, I think you are getting upset over an erroneous idea. I do not believe that the majority of those who speak about veils and sacred vessels are saying that a woman who wears a mantilla to Mass is equivalent to, say, a consecrated virgin or a religious nun or sister. If that is what you garnered, is it possible that since you yourself have a special interest that you might innocently enough allow a natural feeling of, "they’re trying to encroach on my territory’ to drive you into a misunderstanding of the texts?
 
Because one of the main arguments the modernist trads use to wear a headcovering is because they claim the woman is sacred. That’s why I care. Because it is factually incorrect. Yes, there are sacred men and women. They have been consecrated by the Holy Spirit through the ministry of the Church. You know them as clergy, religious men and religious women, male and female vowed members of secular institutes, professed diocesan hermits/hermitesses, and sacred virgin members of the Order of Virgins. They are factually sacred. But laywomen who want to wear a veil because they point to something that is special - the tabernacle, the altar, etc., they want to arrogate sacrality to themselves when there are people who actually are sacred.

If a woman wants to wear a headcovering because she wants to do something “traditional” fine. If she wants to claim that women are obliged, then NOT fine, because it is no longer obligatory. If she wants to wear a headcovering because she thinks its chic or because it reminds her of First Commiunicant innocense or because her grandmother did or whatever, fine. If she wants to do so because she thinks it is a virtue, not fine. So, the act itself is indifferent. But the motivation and the rationale behind it is going to be okay or not okay depending on what it is.

And let’s be serious here. A truly traditional woman would sit apart from her male family members because separation of the sexes at Church was the traditional practice. So modernist traditionalists are in fact cherry pickers.
 
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Gosh, that’s a lot to put on a group of “modernist traditionalists”.
 
If you are going to be a traditional Catholic, then know what the tradition is and why. Be realistic about your arguments and rationale, and have it be in conformity to actual Church teachings and tradition. Wearing headcoverings is a preference. It’s not a virtue. It’s no longer commanded. I don’t wear grey often because it doesn’t look good on me. If an obsolete traditional practice is obsolete, then there’s no point in fabricating extra reasons to resurrect it just because one is desperate to see “tradition”. Rather, acknowledge the fact that there aren’t many reasons for resurrection and leave it at that.
 
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