Veiled assumptions

Here I am again! I wanted to get the news out about the first paid post at The Saint Around the Corner post, and as I was thinking about it…one more topic for this space came to mind:

How could I have neglected this one? Especially since it can certainly be a..heated topic these days.

First, my memories, since those are the rules:

Despite the photographic evidence above, I didn’t ordinarily wear any head covering to Mass growing up, First of all, if you recall, I wasn’t taken to Mass until I was five, which would have been 1965, at which point, the head-covering rule was, if not formally dispensed, at least widely disregarded. That’s a photo of my First Communion in 1968, I think, so I was dressed for that. My mother is on the left, and a friend of hers on the right.

So that’s my personal recollection. That’s it!

However….

My mother’s wardrobe points to the broader experience of head covering, and one that I want to speak to before opening it up.

“Veiling” has come back into fashion over the past twenty years. In my (Novus Ordo) parish, depending on the Mass, you are going to see hefty proportion of women and girls wearing veils - maybe 10-20%.

(Side note: I went to three Traditional Latin Masses in different parishes in France last fall - 2 in Lyon and 1 in Troyes - and not a single woman was wearing a headcovering of any type, hat or veil.)

FSSP parish in Lyon, 9/2025

There’s a lot of conversation about the practice, much of which involves spiritualizing the practicing of wearing a veil, specifically.

This is interesting to me because, of course, the traditional practice - like, really traditional, which your Catholic grandmothers observed - was not about veils, but simply head-covering. In some cultures, veils were normative, in others shawls or hats. And remember, aside from the Biblical injunction and the mention in the 1917 Code, it was simply the social norm for mature adults to always wear a head covering of some sort in public. Hence the necessity of the hat-check in restaurants, since men don’t (aren’t supposed to) wear hats indoors.

Rather than take up space here, I’m going to refer you to an old, but definitely still-worth it post from Aliens in this World - repository of all sorts of great nuggets of Catholic information, still going strong after decades! I don’t know if all of the image links still work, but give it a shot. Maureen reminds us:

In Italian, Portuguese, and Hispanic ethnic parishes (and Filipino, Japanese, and Korean ones, since they were heavily influenced by Hispanic missionaries), sure the ladies wore lace veils and even real mantillas. But in most of the US, pre-Vatican II Catholic women wore a wondrous variety of Sunday hats, sometimes augmented by kerchiefs, shawls, hairbows, and the like. Lace chapel veils (what most people mean by “mantilla”) didn’t become widely popular until the beehive hairdo.

Look at vintage images of Catholic schoolchildren at Mass. The girls aren’t wearing veils. Most of the time they’re wearing a little beret or something similar that’s uniform-issue.

Scarves were very popular. Have it round your neck or over your shoulders, then pull it up for Mass.

Take a look at this old, amusing vintage Irish film on “Manners at Mass” - I can’t embed it, but it’s definitely worth your time, not only for the variety of female headgear, but for the peek into pre-Conciliar Mass habits, good and bad.

And, this brief scene from The Quiet Man:

All of this is to just say that the contemporary spiritualizing of wearing a veil, specifically, is an intriguing example of how thinking about spiritual practices, well, develops.

So, feel free to offer your memories - not arguments, if you can help it! - about head coverings in Mass in the past and that transition period.

And come visit the other place!