Headcovering and headship

[Mintaka]

Summertime is a good time to practice wearing a hat outside. Dig around in your garden while wearing a hat. You will soon forget to be distracted by it!

And if it’s breezy, or if you expect to be bending down a lot with your daughter, you might want to get a hatpin. Hatpins can make hat life a lot easier and remove your worries.

But most summer hats are good at staying on your head.

 

[pensmama87]

Summertime is a good time to practice wearing a hat outside. Dig around in your garden while wearing a hat. You will soon forget to be distracted by it!

And if it’s breezy, or if you expect to be bending down a lot with your daughter, you might want to get a hatpin. Hatpins can make hat life a lot easier and remove your worries.

But most summer hats are good at staying on your head.

Yes. As hat wearing/covering heads has become less common, we’ve lost some of the cultural knowledge that went with them, and that included securing them!

I used to just use bobby pins to secure veils in my hair, or would tie scarves, and they’d slip and slide all over the place. Now I sew a basic comb in and they stay put, which is much less distracting and works when managing small children.

 

[dixieagle]

Yeah it’s just not something Catholics spend any time thinking about. Or writing about.

It’s a discipline that made sense in the context of the first century, particularly when uncovered or shorn hair were indicators of prostitution, and in later centuries when such head coverings still were the social norm for modest (i.e. Virtuous) women.

Thank you!

 

[CatherinePio]

I wear a veil during Mass, and I love it. I would like to point out that sometimes the Lord can call you to something like that as a way to deepen your devotion to Him. It can feel REALLY awkward the first few times you wear one, especially if you are in a parish that has no women that veil. I got a lot of strange looks the first couple of times that I veiled. In fact, I still do, I just ignore them now, because veiling is so important to me. Now I am not the only one doing it, my little sister joined me, so I know that as strange as it feels having an outward sign of devotion, it will always be worth it if the Holy Spirit uses my veiling to bring someone closer to Jesus.

My reason for veiling is, at least in part, summed up by a quote from St. John Chrysostom, “Woman, because she was created by being drawn from man’s side, is constantly trying to return to him. She desires the original unity of one flesh and one bone. The desire for unity between man and woman is a mirror of the relationship between Christ and the soul. As woman longs for union with man in human relationships, she is also drawn to unity with God. He calls her to become one with Him: to come under His side and become flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone. This occurs during reception of Eucharist. The covering of the head with a veil symbolizes the reality of woman sheltered in the side of her Source and becoming one with Him. She becomes covered and hidden in her Divine Spouse.”

 

[Irishmom2]

so I know that as strange as it feels having an outward sign of devotion, it will always be worth it if the Holy Spirit uses my veiling to bring someone closer to Jesus.

Can you explain that? How would **your **wearing a veil bring someone closer to Jesus?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Can you explain that? How would **your **wearing a veil bring someone closer to Jesus?

That was puzzling me a bit too, but in reading through in context, I got the idea that the outward sign (headcovering) which she was doing first intrigued and then encouraged her sister to do the same. . .and, going further back in the post, I kind of thought that the poster was saying that the reasons she prayerfully pondered in making this choice brought her closer to Jesus, and that the same reasons, acting on her sister through the poster, brought the sister closer to Jesus.

It’s kind of like back in the old days (oh how old I feel some days), when I was in elementary school the nuns wore habits. Full habits. And they had the rosaries at their sides and they were always praying. And just seeing them like that, with their symbols of the habit and their sacramental of the rosary, kind of guided our minds toward God and made us want to take out our rosaries and pray more often.

So a part of the nuns’ discipline of wearing habits and praying, right out there in public for everybody to see, brought us ‘closer to Jesus’ by making their relationship of love for Him seem like something beautiful that we could do too.

I also wore the chapel vein OR the beanie (we had tartan uniforms, beanies, and ties) to Mass. I (and a lot of my girl classmates) liked the very ‘grownup’ feeling of the veils, because they were more like the nuns’ wimples/veils, and we would be at low Mass and feeling, believe it or not, more ‘invisible’ that way. We couldn’t see out so well and weren’t so distracted; one’s eyes were on one’s missal. And also, in a world where beehives were popular (to be followed fairly shortly by long ‘Cher’ hair), having ones’ hair covered meant that one was free from all the rigamarole of teasing, backcombing, Dippity Do, and beauty parlor visits (the beehive) or later, for those of us with curls, the dreaded ‘hair iron’ to flatten one’s locks a la Cher. So one was actually less ‘visible’ than the girls with the hairdos and the gaudy clothes (Carnaby Street) or later the uniform of T shirt and jeans.

 

[Lea101]

The only difficulty I have in understanding is that it pretty much hobbles any of us women from wearing a veil/chapel cap/mantilla (and more than a few of us women have ones that belonged to us when we were younger, or to our mothers), and even from wearing scarves or hats unless it’s the dead of winter in the northern states (and keeping them on during Mass). . .because it is ‘not the norm’. And because it’s ‘not the norm’, then we’re ‘drawing attention to ourselves’ apparently.

I thought that God looked within? I thought that we weren’t supposed to judge by appearances, or to assume that people’s actions were done solely, mainly, or even ‘partly’ for our own ‘glory’. . .

But it seems that if I went to church tomorrow wearing my mom’s vintage mantilla, or my aunt’s silk headscarf, or even a ‘church hat’ (as one woman at my parish does), I’d be judged as trying to look all holier-than-thou and making people uncomfortable purely for my own selfish and, in this ‘time’, ‘wrong’ desires. . . yet if I were to go to church wearing ripped jeans, tight short skirts, showing some ‘skin’, or wearing a rumpled track suit or a faded stretched out T-shirt, people would be lined up in my defense.

The people who defend such clothing won’t usually defend your veils, and the people who defend veils won’t usually defend such clothing.

It’s really not puzzling, people defend what they believe in.
If you go to an uber traditional parish, you would have many people supporting veils and many people probably judging plain Jane with plain old jeans and a dirty t shirt at the corner.

My parish is different, usually older women veil. Especially the Indian women (my grandma included). The younger women (aka me) will dress in jeans and sneakers. For the most part, both groups sincerely don’t care at all. So I’m thankful for that. Immodest women do get shamed quite a bit. (I was nagged at because my jeans showed the shape of my seductive and sinful legs. The horror)

I do remember a young woman voicing out the same concerns as you, but when a man asked her about the exact comments were thrown her way, she admitted that she only thinks that people are judging her. At the end of the day, she read mean comments from “liberal women” about women and her anxiety got out of control. She thought people in her parish were judging her when they were simply just looking. I’m not saying that your concerns are not real, but it’s worth mentioning because I feel like a lot of women start chasing this bogeyman in their parish. I know I do at times.

 

[anilorak13ska]

Can you explain that? How would **your **wearing a veil bring someone closer to Jesus?

For me, seeing a woman cover her head as part of a feminine, modest outfit reminds me of the Real Presence of Our Lord. So in that way, I agree that it can bring someone closer to Jesus, because it has brought me closer to Him. To the point of considering covering myself. This from someone who wore a red gown and no veil to her Catholic wedding

But if a woman is wearing shorts and sneakers and throws a chapel veil on top of her head, I am sorry, that just looks silly and like an afterthought and is distracting.