Son wants to wear chapel veil

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This. ^^^^^^

Veils are for religious orders. Laity wear head coverings if they wish.

Op if your child wants to pull a sweater over his head, ignore it. He is 6: he will get sick of that behaviour and stop it.

The more attention you give it the longer he will do it.

Use some reverse psychology. Reward the good behaviour, ignore the bad
 
While I deplore the tendency of modern people to change every available noun into a verb by adding ‘ing’ (ugh, or is that ‘ughing’), and while I find some proponents of a practice they choose to term ‘veiling’ who offer questionable arguments, the fact remains that women in Christian history have worn headcoverings for centuries as a pious practice, a ‘multifocal’ practice (come on, we wear clothes to cover our body so the idea that headcoverings ‘only’ evolved due to wanting ‘clean hair’ is itself kind of ridiculous. Clothing itself from prehistoric times was never simply about ‘covering’; different items expressed different needs or practices, and ‘sacred clothing’ has been there from earliest times.)

It is as ridiculous to claim that a woman wearing a headcovering, whatever she chooses and whatever she calls it, is doing so from ‘false piety’ or 'misguided understanding and holier-than-thouism as it is to claim that a woman who ‘now’ puts on a headcovering in church is somehow submitting to a misogynist, chauvinistic and oppressive behavior and is a traitor to her sex.

IOW, ladies and gents, both ‘sides’ are guilty of trying to present their point of view using not just facts, but some rather questionable and even maliciously invented ‘faux facts’.

You don’t want to wear a headcovering for any reason? Don’t bother to give me the reason, please, it isn’t necessary that I know that you hate hats, or you think they’re a symbol of hate, or that people who wear them are pious nematodes. Just don’t wear one. And then you won’t have to talk about it, you can just. NOT. WEAR. ONE,and that’s it; shut thy mouth, and don’t judge those who do.

You do want to wear a headcovering for any reason? Don’t bother to give me the reason, please, it isn’t necessary that I know that you love hats, or that they are a symbol of the sacred or humility, and people who don’t wear them are secular lazies. Just wear one. And then you won’t have to talk about it, you can JUST. WEAR. ONE. and that’s it; shut thy mouth, and don’t judge those who don’t.
 
What if?

Instead of a veil, you crafted a more masculine devotional garment he can take to chapel and wear, in imitation of other men who wear them, like:
  1. A “zuchetto”, most commonly red or purple and worn by bishops (who incidently, remove it for the Eucharistic prayer). I think priests are allowed to wear black ones but nobody ever does. The pope wears a white one.
  2. A hooded scapular, long and wide like many monks or friars might wear (not two felt squares connected by strings). The hood isn’t worn on the head during mass, but he could pull it up if he wanted to be focused in prayer before or after mass, or if he got cold!
 
Veils are for the consecrated religious. Only consecrated religious “veil.”

Just tell the boy that, and tell him boys do not wear clothing meant for females. Then, STOP wearing the veil yourself. It’s confusing your son, and he is more important than your desire to wear a veil at mass.
 
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If you feel called to wear a veil then your son need to know a bit more about this practice and why little boys don’t wear a veil.

If your son wanted to wear a dress, would you stop wearing dresses?
 
HumblePilgrim said:
He is an insister type of kid. So, maybe I will put off veiling for now until he understand when I tell him that some women wear veils to Church and that’s that. Thank you, all for the comments.
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There is no reason for you to put off wearing your veil if you want to wear it. I expect your sweet son just wants to be like Mommy at Church. He’s trying so hard to do the right things which is quite admirable, really. What if you were to let him wear a veil one time and perhaps, have your priest speak to him about it after Mass or by appointment? He might be able to impress upon your young son why little boys don’t have to wear veils and aren’t supposed to and might be able to suggest other things your son could wear instead.
 
I am. I am also tired of the denigration of women who veil, and of traditionalists in general.
 
Veil fabric is often cool stuff to handle and touch, and pretty much everybody wants to play with it. Your son isn’t being “girly” to be interested in it; he’s not used to seeing anybody wearing such things. It’s like you came home with high tech stuff from the planet Mars. So there’s no need to be upset; just be firm that this is something for women.

If your son wants to dress up more for church, that is perfectly normal; you do too. So if he doesn’t have special formal clothes or “church clothes,” maybe he should. (Obviously, don’t spend too much money on them, since he will grow out of them quickly.)

It is possible to find little hats for little boys – usually fedoras or Robin Hood type hats, or various ethnic hats.

However, if you buy him a church hat, let him know that Christian men or boys don’t wear hats in church. They take them off respectfully at the church door, and then they lay the hats down next to them in the pew (unless you go to a church old enough to have “hat clips” on the backs of the pews).

As St. Paul says, Christ is the head of the Church, and Christ is God as well as Man. So unlike normal humans in Jewish times, Christ could stand bareheaded and barefaced before God, without fear of being destroyed or showing disrespect. Baptized Christian men represent Jesus in this way, so they have traditionally bared their heads in church instead of wearing Jewish prayer shawls or kippahs/yarmulkes. The only men who usually wear hats in church are priests, bishops, the pope, etc – and they ceremonially take them off and put them on again, at various points of Mass. Other men who wear hats in church are using bad manners, or at least, very recent manners.

It is totally okay to tell your son this.

Baptized Christian women have traditionally had a different rule because they have a different role, even though we also have Christ’s life in us. We have continuity instead of difference with Jewish practice for women – because we are representing the humans who make up the Church’s Body, instead of representing the Head. Recent rules have permitted women not to wear hats or veils, but it is still something women can do, and something you are starting to think women should do.

It is also okay to tell your son this.

Kids are curious and they like to imitate things. But just as kids have to learn that they can’t just sit down and start driving the car or operating heavy machinery, kids are perfectly capable of learning different fashion rules for boys and girls, and for adults and kids; or different church roles for different people.

Re: hoodies in church – Hm. Some monks do keep their hoods on, in church, and not just the ones who are priests. There must be some kind of “hood exception” to keep their heads warm, or a schedule of times they put it on and take it off.

I don’t know much about it. Sounds like a good research project for you and your son! If you email some different monks from different orders, I bet you can get some answers. Kids love to be not just repeating the work on something the adults in their lives already know. You two could really work together to learn something new to you both.
 
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Kids are attracted to salient things. Pretty veils are one of them. Honestly it’s nothing surprising but it can get pretty annoying.

Like what others said, you either stop veiling or just tell him no. Honestly, a 6 year old does not care about the mystery behind a cloth on a woman’s head, no matter how many times he ask ‘but why?’. He just won’t get it. You could try, but I wouldn’t recommend that as the best option. Just tell him it’s only for girls and tell him to obey you.

As for the whole veiling drama…let women choose to do what they want with their scalp…

That being said though, I do detect some sort of hidden pride in some women who veil in online forums and I’m quite annoyed at people giving modern reasons behind veiling (this was covered in the other thread). But ultimately, it’s not forced or banned, so why not let us make our own decisions
 
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Exactly. Women who oppose veiling can be pretty vile. They say those who veil are prideful, are probably projecting their pride on others. I would like to veil, i think it is pretty. Nothing wrong with that. I won’t be guilt tripped into thinking that wanting to veil because of beauty is prideful. Although, i do not veil because no one else does it where I am.
 
There’s also the option of wearing a more “boring” head covering. The lace mantillas are pretty, but I’ve used an absolutely plain headwrap almost the same color as my hair before. (For me, it also took care of any personal concerns about pride, simply because such an item is also normal enough streetwear for women.)
 
HumblePilgrim said:
I have wanted to veil for a very long time. A few years in fact. I only just did it last Sunday. I am not wishing to start a chapel veil war here. I know the controversy about it. I just wanted to know how to explain it to my son in a way where he doesn’t feel he has to put his sweatshirt on his head which calls more attention to me where I do not want any extra focus or attention.
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Maybe you could try to use something less distracting, like a bandana or scarf tied behind your neck, and wear it around the house sometimes.
 
misstherese said:
Isn’t that the same thing? I thought that was established. Either veiling or wearing a hat or scarf would have been acceptable.
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Women often wore a hat or a doily as opposed to a veil.

Also, it may have been in the code of canon prior to 1983, but I can tell you in the USA at least, all the women and girls under senior citizen age stopped doing it much, much earlier, like right after Vatican II.
I was a regular Mass goer and in Catholic school throughout the 70s and early 80s and was never told by parents, priests or nuns that I needed a hat, veil, or head covering, nor did any of the hundreds of girls in my all-girls Catholic high school wear one, ever. My own mom, who was not particularly young, never wore a hat or head covering to church in all the years I knew her. I know she had worn them in the 50s when it was “required” because we had old ones in the house.
 
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Actually, in many parts of the US, older women continued to wear little scarves over their hair and tied under their chins, until well into the 1980’s. (Although in the winter, you just kept your winter hat on.)

Of course, the 1980’s was about the time that my parish got its heating upgraded and its air conditioning added in. No more sponsored hand fans printed with ads or pictures. No need to keep from freezing, no need to cover limp sweaty hair… plus the advent of “big hair” for women.

But I grew up in the 1970’s, so I think of those little scarves as the traditional Mass gear; and I know that most US Catholic women never wore chapel veils except during the beehive hairstyle era, because it was almost all hats before then. It cracks me up, seeing people opine that chapel veils were always worn from time immemorial. It’s always fun to collect pix of Catholics at Mass, because you almost never see a chapel veil but you do see everything else.

(Get off my lawn, you darned kids!)

Chapel veils act as a subculture/fashion marker for modern EF-goers, though, and that’s not anything bad. A modern EF-goer has as much right to wear the garb of her local Catholic culture as a Breton Catholic does.
 
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I forgot that most people wouldn’t know about the Breton ladies…

Here’s an article showing a few of the hundreds of different styles of headdresses that were once worn in Brittany. Basically, every village had its own preferred style, just as they tended to wear slightly different styles of dresses and footwear.

Women wore less elaborate hats when they were doing substantial physical labor, like working in the fields or doing laundry. They wore more elaborate ones when they were going out in public or going to church, and Breton ladies doing church stuff was a very popular subject for painters.

People still sometimes wear them at church festivals or folk dance gatherings.

Even when you are talking about countries like Italy or Spain, where people did wear mantillas, the styles varied a lot from place to place as well as within the place.

There really is no one uniform style of headgear that all Catholic women wore, at any time or place in history. Even nuns weren’t always all that uniform about it, if only because they often relied on donations or available fabrics.

We do know a fair amount about historical fashion extremes, because there were sermons preached against ladies wearing extreme styles of hats like the hennin. (Just like we know that pastors occasionally preached against the folly of men wearing various fashions, or women wearing the form-revealing “gates of Hell” style. No, it didn’t show skin… it was just tailored, laced, and cut to be a bit slinkier than in previous civilizations. And to be fair, I’ve seen reenactors make it pretty slinky!)
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
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misstherese:
Isn’t that the same thing? I thought that was established. Either veiling or wearing a hat or scarf would have been acceptable.
Click to expand...
Women often wore a hat or a doily as opposed to a veil.

Also, it may have been in the code of canon prior to 1983, but I can tell you in the USA at least, all the women and girls under senior citizen age stopped doing it much, much earlier, like right after Vatican II.
I was a regular Mass goer and in Catholic school throughout the 70s and early 80s and was never told by parents, priests or nuns that I needed a hat, veil, or head covering, nor did any of the hundreds of girls in my all-girls Catholic high school wear one, ever. My own mom, who was not particularly young, never wore a hat or head covering to church in all the years I knew her. I know she had worn them in the 50s when it was “required” because we had old ones in the house.
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This was also my experience at the same time. The only woman I knew (other than the Sisters) who wore a headcovering in church was my grandmother. She wore a black veil, but she was not a regular church-goer. In spite of the fact that they send their children to Catholic school and expect of their children to go to Mass, my grandparents had a falling out with a church in the 1950s and only rarely attended Mass. But when she went, she wore a black veil.
 
When I was a child in the fifties and sixties everyone wore hats. We went to Spain when I was 11 and brought back mantillas. We wore them to church then but not before.Some women did have round chapel veils they kept in a plastic case in their purse.
 
Oh, dear. I’ve opened a can of worms.

Just to be clear. I do not weir a veil or mantilla per se. I wear an infinity veil or scarf. It kind of circles the head. It’s a head covering. I could probably wear a hat to church but I feel that would obscure the view. I chose an infinity veil because to me it represents Catholicity (if that’s a word). I feel very safe and humbled and quiet while veiled. My peripheral vision is a bit obscured.

It does take a little courage to wear one. Much like it does wearing my cross to work. It symbolizes outwardly to others my feelings about being a God and a Christian.

Now, I became Catholic like 7 years ago or something. I was never compelled to veil. I am with a NO Church and except for one elderly lady and a few young people I never felt the desire to veil.

I really became interested in Padre Pio (I carry his picture around in my purse) and the fact that St. Paul said: “Every man praying or prophesying with his head covered disgraceth his head. But every woman praying or prophesying with her head not covered disgraceth her head: for it is all one as if she were shaven.” and also “Therefore ought the woman to have a power over her head, because of the angels.”

Yes, it is a normative custom. It’s not dogma. But, I WANT do it. I don’t judge anyone who doesn’t. I did wear one until last week! It just MAKES me feel more reverence during the mass. That’s just me.

There is so much vitriol in this thread. I thought I was speaking to Traditional Catholics who this is a custom being primarily revived by them. I’m sorry for causing the drama.
 
It’s normally disrespectful for women to cover their heads indoors as well, although more and more I see indoor hats gaining acceptance among both genders.

However, when it comes to worship within church settings, the modern rules of head-covering etiquette don’t apply the same way. Head-covering during worship is a practice in many world religions.
 
No, historically in the european and anglo-american culture not, headpieces, veils and hats were worn indoor. There are rules for the size of hats of female opera guests to not take the sight of the people behind, for example. (19th/early 20th century) .
 
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