When I was received into the Church as a convert shortly after Vatican II, the custom which decreed women wear some kind of head covering in church had already gone by the board. Like so many other time-honoured Catholic practices, it seemed against the spirit of the times and it was jettisoned along with many others. I, so new in the Church at that time, felt a twinge of inexplicable regret but frankly, didn't feel able to buck the trend in those days. I embraced it, therefore, against what I now recognise to have been my truer instincts. If anything, my lapsed 'cradle' Catholic husband's attitude reinforced my defiance of tradition. I remember returning from a few days holiday one Easter morning, just in time for me to go to Mass at our local parish church. Our luggage was on the back seat of the car. No, he said, looking troubled, he would not go with me to Mass, but he'd help me open my suitcase to fish out a headscarf. To my lasting sorrow, I told him rather brusquely not to bother, we didn't bother with all that now. My husband's disappointment and shock were visible but I felt suspicious of this male desire of his to see me muffled up.
The author claims no authoritative view on this or any matter pertaining to the traditional rite or the widespread culture that surrounded it but feels that her thoughts on this small detail of traditional catholic practice may be of interest to other women members of the Latin Mass Society.
Sadly, we are long since separated but looking back I see that he was right and I was wrong. Neglect of this seemingly unimportant detail of feminine dress in church reflected the creeping indifference to sacred places and to the presence of the Blessed Sacrament itself. Not only the 'reform' of the liturgy, but so many small betrayals of this nature, drove my husband from the Church. My chirpy, post-conciliar secularism did nothing to coax him back.
I suppose I was a modern young woman, influenced as many of my contemporaries were, by the feminist writers Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer. With that background I readily equated the mantilla or headscarf worn in church with the 1950s housewife's frilly cocktail apron. Both were interpretable as badges of feminine submission to masculine authority. The suburban hostess with a wisp of embroidered muslin tied fetchingly about her waist declared herself a servant. By the same rule, the mantilla or headscarf in church proved its wearer the victim of priestly misogyny based on St. Paul's 'notorious' strictures.
But so what? The authority of neither living men nor the Apostle is really at issue here. All that matters is the authority of God. Any exterior gesture which voluntarily acknowledges His transcendent authority over us cannot but be appropriate.
Moreover, maturity and the acquisition of wider experience has shown me that it is not only a handful of die-hard old catholic ladies who cover their heads to pray. The gesture is integral to the practise of women of other faiths. A most attractive young Indian friend of mine, a Hindu of professional status, faithfully performs a daily puja before her domestic shrine. Whilst she would not dream of covering her head with the end of her sari to greet her husband's return from work as her mother would most certainly have done. She veils herself for prayer in private as at the temple. It is, she told me simply, a sign of respect, of humility, of obedience to the will of God. Pretty much as I suspected all along, in fact. The identical practice of Sikhs and highly-educated, westernised Muslim women who totally reject the Islamic injunction to cover their heads, let alone faces, in purely social situations, confirms the essential significance of this immemorial gesture.
Lately, I have been both edified and encouraged by the example of young women half my age, attending traditional Masses. Pre-occupied with large families, having fractious toddlers seated on their laps, they're often unable to respond to the sacristy bell be kneeling. Yet their heads are devoutly covered. For me, that says it all. Honouring their insight and their wisdom, I shall imitate them from now on.
[Taken from the Latin Mass Society's May 2000 Newsletter.]