…but not something we are required or should be coerced to do
In point of fact, there are those reading this from an era when girls & women were precisely required and were, more than coerced, compelled to do this. The head had to be covered, even if it meant sticking a tissue on your head. That’s one issue that ultimately needs be frankly acknowledged
One can’t be blithe regarding things from the past: yes, this [whatever it is] need not have the same connotation today it had in the 19th century
But one can’t thereby make as though the connotation it did have wasn’t a real one. Or react with wonderment that those who remember it, or something of it, associate it with its former signification and not the new one, arbitrarily assigned
To use an absurdity…It’s frankly too fantastic to adopt a Victorian custom, like mourning, and then wonder that people notice and remark it – as though it could be overlooked since Victorian mourning was meant precisely to be elaborate – and then explain that yes you’re doing this as Victorians did but, really, how could one think thereby that one is trying to be Victorian or evoke Victorians. Moreover, it doesn’t mean one is actually in any way Victorian…except in so far as one actually chose to, internally, be Victorian
That’s what I hear – casting it in a societal era rather than ecclesiastical concepts – as a professor trying to understand the sociology of the matter
The ensemble of a proper lady of my mother’s station – relative to society and the Church – required her to dress in a certain way. It was a convention. The civil society changed faster than the Church in this and so my mother had the way she dressed for everything outside Church as years passed on but kept a few old ensembles she wore to Church…until she was liberated from those style conventions
There was then no mystical experience, no missing significance, to wearing a dress (instead of a pantsuit), a hat, gloves and handbag, which is practically what we’re talking about. Catholic women were not wrapped in veils…unless they were in a souk in Marrakech
Issue two for those of my generation is when there are allusions to some profound spirituality known to the preconciliar generation that they (i.e. we) cherished but has been lost to today. This now applies to many things…women’s head coverings, the direction in which we prayed, and so on. There’s a problem when those of us who lived through the epoch confront something spurious and say, “but that’s not how it actually was at all!”
I was a professor of theology for years. I worked in formation; that meant spiritual direction for seminarians, priests, religious and occasionally laity. Theology of vocation is impinged when one says s/he is “called” to do something, if they mean to actually express a personal experience
The corollary, and problem, is that “being called” passes from a subjective experience to an objective reality when the Church confirms and ratifies the perceived call…as when a man is called by the bishop, in the rite of ordination, to be ordained priest. Until then, he has felt called and external signs supported it – but when the bishop announces that he’s elected to the priesthood, the call is now external and objective, not internal and subjective
It can be priesthood. Religious life. Permanent diaconate. Marriage
Beyond a call to a permanent state of life, it can be a transition to a new life reality…a diocesan priest called to be in or found an institute of consecrated life as St Pierre Julien Eymard, for example
It can be one is called to a third order secular or a secular institute
Or, less organised and structured but no less real, one is called to a life of greater penance and asceticism. These are calls perceived and calls discerned
So, it is with the theology of vocation in view one needs answer: what exactly is the purported experience of call and what exactly is the meaning of “being called” to don a head-covering? How is this to be understood theologically, as it must be if it is presented to a minister of the Church as
vocare for discernment
Frankly, the concept is an enigma to me. I have found only one person’s writings – and she is a philosopher, not a theologian – who understands the problem and tries to address it cogently. Theology of Consecrated Life and, for that matter, theology of sign provide an entire opus on the theology of external signs of the inward consecration, effected by the Holy Spirit at the moment of the emission of vows/sacred promises in profession, in the hands of the ecclesiastical authority. They don’t satisfy here, really
In the revised Rite of Consecration of Virgins, provision was made – accurately and rightly – for a consecrated virgin to wear a ring and a head-covering as a sign of the consecration imparted to her by the bishop. Similarly, with a diocesan hermit, provision is made for imparting the cowl as sign of the consecration effected by the bishop by which the person is a hermit
But here we are talking of a woman being called to assume on her own and adopt some head-covering, asserting God called her. Even a tertiary vocation has a ratification of a call inwardly perceived
This experience from my perspective is more an issue of…listening to chant helps me to pray better…the use of a prayer shawl is conducive to meditation
The theology of vocation readily admits of transitory experiences…I’m called to serve the poor for X period of time. I’m called to become a minister to the sick and home-bound in my parish in this phase of life. These are not on the same wavelength as saying, for example, I’m called to wear a baptismal garment at Mass and in daily life
Prophetic act might be an answer but that, too, is profoundly problematic. One is not called to wear a religious habit. One is called to be a religious.
er of the Mass . . . there are always several women who have their heads veiled with chapel veils . . . and the only woman cantor they use in these Masses . . . veils . . . while she is serving as cantor in a mass . . .
to meet his children,
