Part II: I really only had two reasons to "veil" at Mass

Obedience and solidarity in tradition

Part I is here: Are we making this too complicated?

I haven’t written about why I began wearing a covering on my head in church. (I use the word veiling here and in my previous post, and I do sometimes wear my mother’s lace veil, but usually I wear a scarf and occasionally, a hat. More on choices below.)

Quick background before I get to the two reasons I decided to cover my head in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament:

Normally, I go to the Novus Ordo Mass in a beautiful church with a schola; the chant and polyphony are truly sacred. Our pastor keeps things rubrical, as much as one can in the current situation, and is demonstrably devoted to the parish and everyone in it. I sing alto in that choir and do not wear any head covering up in the loft as I think I would faint due to the stuffiness, and also distract everyone with trying to keep it on while juggling music and so on. I don it afterwards when I descend to receive.

I go to a Benedictine abbey nearby for daily Mass, also Novus Ordo, simply and reverently said. I do dearly wish they were both the Traditional Latin Mass, but they are the “unicorn Novus Ordo” situations so rarely encountered. Occasionally we go to the FSSP (Traditional Latin Mass) parish an hour away.

Things are complicated for me, liturgically, but that fact gives me a chance to talk about head covering even in the Novus Ordo parish.

I used to be a staunch Reform-of-the-Reform-er and as such, saw no reason to cover my head at Mass, nor did I ever really give it much thought. Certainly, *I* was not going to be the sore thumb sticking out in a sea of bare heads for something passé and fussy. I had, shall we say, bigger liturgical fish to fry. To me, getting the priest to say the black and do the red and stop the general lameness, not to mention outright abuse of all sorts, was the struggle.

I think it was just before Lent of 2019 that the iron entered my soul, because of the aftermath of the late-summer revelations in 2018 by Archbishop Viganò as a credible witness against then-Cardinal McCarrick, finally bringing to light a network of corruption.

Yes, we had known about it before; all was rumor, but we knew. I more than most, as my husband Phil Lawler had been writing about it all, a decade before the shattering 2002 Boston Globe Spotlight revelations, culminating in his book The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture (affiliate link), which examines our regional disaster in order to amplify a thesis about the whole church in our era. I highly recommend it.

But never before had anyone been willing to take on the monolith that was (and remains, actually), the McCarrick regime, with receipts.

I will try to collect my observations about that time in a separate post. August 2018 to the last few weeks before Lent 2019 was a time for me like re-breaking a bone or busting open stitches from major surgery, wound upon wound. The pain is deep but where things are festering, trauma has to be endured.

I was praying about the trauma, which I felt more starkly than I had felt anything before. I was in even more anguish than before over priests, bishops, and Pope Francis. I now saw clearly that the Church must return to Tradition. But who am I? No one. There’s nothing I can do.

Suddenly I realized that I can only change myself and Lent is a good time to start. I could take steps to make myself more traditional and it would indeed be penitential.

I could resolve always to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, which I had been doing for a long time, but always kneeling, no matter what the circumstance, such as perhaps making a spectacle in a Holy Communion line where everyone else is standing and receiving in the hand, especially as I’m getting older. Getting myself up off the floor can take an extra second. I would kneel even if possibly encountering hostility — as did happen during lockdown.

And I could begin wearing a covering on my head. That one came to me as something random, awkward, and potentially attention-getting and judgement-incurring. But it came to me.

The Holy Communion resolution we can discuss another time and hopefully makes sense. The head covering, though! Why do it?

My reasons were not the ones I often see, though I respect others’ observations and conclusions and affirm them.

I didn’t feel any pull to make myself necessarily more focused and recollected, and after five years, I’m not sure it has that effect on me, as I am pretty terminally distracted.

I didn’t think of myself as a precious entity requiring veiling, other than very abstractly. I think I dress pretty modestly, trying to look decently respectful; and after all, I am the grandmother of 20 and counting, sixty-four years old! (I realized the other night that I’ve been going around saying I’m 63 and that is just not true.)

I am an enthusiastic proponent of the differences and complementarities of the sexes and have no issue with some rules for women and others for men. I do think women are precious; it’s just not what moved me.

No, these are my reasons:

First, Scripture clearly asks women to cover our heads in church. St. Paul doesn’t use a lot of words but he’s pretty firm. I believe that my approach to Scripture ought to be one of docility; let me fit myself to the Word of God, not vice versa.

Second, if I was going to ask priests to become more traditional, including in ways that might seem uncomfortable to them (heavy and hot vestments! ad orientem posture! custody of the eyes in the sanctuary! reining in their inclination to joke and josh during Mass! long liturgies! learning all that Latin!), I would try my best to be traditional too. Maybe the priest is handicapped by a poor education and a dismissive peer group. Me too.

Wearing a head covering seemed like the most obvious way to accompany them, even if they are oblivious to my hopes and wishes. I believe in speaking out in truth. I also believe that one’s silent witness of whatever devotion one can muster can move mountains. And if not, well, one tried!

I don’t particularly love covering my head, just as priests might not particularly love the things I am asking of them.

My decision was not about preference.

A bit of feminine chitchat:

I am not trying to be provocative to my beloved and piously devoted readers, but I am not a fan of most veils. When I realized I could wear a nice scarf it made my decision easier.

I carry a black veil in my purse so I can pull that out if I need to when I’ve forgotten to grab a scarf but it’s just not my favorite look, as I’m not a polyester lace sort of person.

Before Jackie Kennedy made veil-wearing popular, I think most women in the US and the UK wore hats. Isn’t it interesting that high-class British women, members of the Church of England, still do?

Covering one’s head is meant to signal and engender modesty, as I discussed in Part I, but feminine radiance will out! It’s amusing and touchingly sweet that in many TLM parishes the ladies are sporting fabulously decorated, oversized, and often spangled and crystal-encrusted veils! Proving my point that St. Paul is above all, a choleric, acute, yet paradoxically resigned observer of human nature!

As I say, I usually wear a light-weight scarf in summer and a medium-weight one in winter. I have two nice straw hats but with my shorter curly hair, it’s usually a penance too far (dreaded hat-head afterwards), and in most circumstances feels ostentatious, though perhaps I could get used to it.

In winter, wearing a warm, seasonally appropriate hat — I’m in Massachusetts and am getting into a cold car of an early morning — would just make me too hot indoors, and then I really would spend the rest of the day with my hair in a state!

On the other hand, I’m not moved away from my resolution by the argument that women veiling might cause scandal or even committing uncharity by wearing a head covering where it’s not the custom, because the Code of Canon Law removed the requirement. Thus, as I understand the argument, to wear it is to create a flutter of conscience in others, presumably an unnecessary one. If it were required, it would be a matter of obedience and thus not an issue for anyone.

That’s an interesting general thought about obedience, for sure.

Applied to head covering, it’s misplaced, because it’s Scripture that requires it. Canon Law is or ought to be at the service of truth, including Scripture; it’s not the highest authority. I would argue that Catholic women are capable of being directly obedient to Scripture without any intervention from Canon Law. Many of us have abstained from meat on Fridays as a good, old-fashioned, simple way to observe the day, even though the ban was lifted. Does that somehow burden those who have a burger? Of course not.

How can someone praying, kneeling, and attending to her own business be held responsible while modestly dressed, for others’ reactions? Anyway, sometimes a negative reaction to someone genuinely trying to be more reverent is the precursor to a change of heart for the person reacting.

One just has to accept the uncomfortableness of being the catalyst. After all, isn’t that what we who love the old ways of doing things are asking of priests? That they accept the challenge?

Anyway, those are my reasons. Scripture and tradition.

I thought I’d obey and take up something traditional that seems like a bit of a burden in order to have solidarity with timid priests who might secretly be drawn to be more traditional.

I will try to be more traditional so they can too.

I don’t have (though I am familiar with and endorse) any particularly elevated, deep theology about it.

One more note: As to awkwardness: one consistent feature of the Novus Ordo is its awkwardness, a natural result of rejecting ritual in little things. Insisting on spontaneity and changeable rubrics leads to nothing other than ministers and acolytes wondering what they are supposed to do and when, and having to step out of their role in order to figure things out.

Surely my adding one more element to the general vibe shouldn’t be fatal.

A little side-benefit of my resolution five years ago is now when I do go to a Traditional Latin Mass, which I love, I don’t feel hypocritical for covering my head, as if I’m LARPing or appropriating reverence; it’s now what I always do no matter where I am, in the Presence of Our Lord and for the sake of the angels.