Musings on women covering their heads at Mass, Part I

St. Paul's practicality goes unnoticed, perhaps?

An interesting article at The Free Press reports on the rising trend of veiling at Mass, especially among young women.

Here in Part I is a general observation that I haven’t heard from anyone (though I don’t doubt someone else has noticed); Part II will explain my personal reasons for covering. I haven’t written (or much talked) about why, in 2019, at the age of 59, I began wearing a covering on my head in church. Full disclosure: those reasons are also not the ones I have seen others give!

And I’d be interested in hearing from you about this general observation; do you think it’s valid? Does it make sense to you?

It is this: I think St. Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians is speaking to unmarried women.

In our era and place, we do not have a traditional, national, cultural, or religious costume, so we are totally unfamiliar with the idea that married women in all times and places not affected by modern individualism, but particularly Jewish women of St. Paul’s time, have always covered their hair.

Norwegian women, Pakistani women, Chinese women, Amish women — all women pretty much universally, and Jewish women for sure, covered and if traditional, still cover, their hair.

Consecrated religious women veil* — wear rather complete hair covering — for this reason: they wish to appear, since they are, espoused. They are not in search of a husband, for they already have one, Christ Himself, and their head covering reminds us of this truth.

So married women and consecrated virgins do not appear without their hair covered.

Therefore, St. Paul is speaking to unmarried women.

Because we Americans (and in the West generally) don’t think of things this way, we, men and women, assume St. Paul is speaking to every woman. So we either defensively explain why women don’t have to do this oddly first-century thing or have created a rather impressively spiritual theology about why women ought to do it.

I agree that St. Paul, when he says to wear a head covering "because of the angels," is certainly referencing the hierarchy of creation: “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.”

And it’s lovely to think of precious things being veiled, as Alice von Hildebrand said:

“Therefore, [because of her ability to carry new life,] the dignity of the female is that God, so to speak, has a direct contact with her body. This is why the woman should be veiled. Why is it that women are called upon to be veiled, which is not truly the same way of males? Why? Because whatever is sacred calls for veiling. The shamelessness of women today should make the devil rejoice and should make Christ cry, because there is no more consciousness of the fact that my body is a place where God is conceived.”

But with all due respect to dear Dr. von Hildebrand’s beautiful insights, maybe we are complicating things.

We should remember that St. Paul was practical and actually rather earthy. And he knew that woman is caught up in how she and above all, her hair, which as he says elsewhere, is her glory, looks. The healthy unmarried woman takes pride in her beauty and can’t help making the most of it. It’s human nature for her to do so and for healthy young men to notice.

The married women are already covered in near-universal custom, certainly in St. Paul’s time and place — at Mass and everywhere else. And who among us has not wished we had this practice, free as we are — it’s a lot to take care of your whole household and deal with bad hair days!

St. Paul is simply guarding against making church a place of, well, exploring attraction, being flirtatious, looking at others and being looked at, and not being focused on worship. All very normal activities! Those things aren’t bad — in fact, they are good in their own modest way, or how else would we find our mates? But they are not for church.

Because it is a spiritual event (with the angels present, taking the offering to the throne of God), the Mass needs to have some practical rules. Covering one’s head (and uncovering, for the man) is one of those rules.

Today, Mass is restrained and meeting-like for most. It may be difficult for critics and dismissers of this teaching, with their experience of the versus populum posture of the priest, so conducive to keeping an eye on the staid, child-deprived pew-sitters, to imagine the undoubtedly more boisterous, clamorous, and less “presided-over” pre-conciliar church. A church much more full of life, and comings and goings.

That’s it. I think that’s the reason.

St. Paul is not talking to married women at all, for he would not have encountered any married women who did not cover their heads. He assumes, in his letter, that they are already covered.

He is talking to unmarried women, urging them to be as if they are taken, for the sake of the invisible world bearing its cloud of witness. He wants everyone to minimize distraction. He’s lifting our minds to that heavenly realm and leaving us instruction on how to do so.

*I say veil occasionally as shorthand, but St. Paul says “cover the head” and I think it’s normal, sociologically speaking, for women to wear scarves, hats, or bonnets (but not tissues, as they did in the ‘50s sometimes, when they were rushing out the door without their hats!).