In the small-town Roman Catholic church my family attended when I was a little boy, the Mass was still in Latin and celebrated ad orientem. This small, simple brick church, which was adorned with an east window of the Sacred Heart and three-dimensional stations of the cross, had for me a luminous atmosphere of holiness and solemnity.
Looking from the pews on the right side of the sanctuary was a side altar, over which there was a slightly larger-than-life statue of Mary with three ranks of votive lights in front of her. The young virgin mother was clad in blue, and her head was covered with a blue veil. To my young eyes, the veil embodied her holiness, her specialness, her consecration, her being set apart. She held in her arms the Christ child, the one sent by the Father to save us, who was about to be given to us in the Mass.
In those days, all the women in the congregation wore a head covering. There were a few hats. But almost every female, from little girls to mothers and grandmothers, wore a lace mantilla, a lace veil that covered the head and came down to the shoulders. To my eyes, it was clear that all the women in the congregation were wearing the veil of Mary and shared in her sacredness and holiness.
The women in the congregation, indeed all women, were under the veil of Mary. I knew in an inarticulate way, with fear and trembling, that this sacredness was bound up with the danger and majesty of motherhood. If a woman forgot her head covering, there was a small supply of mantillas in the narthex that could be taken for a small donation. I remember my mother putting on one of these. I always thought my mother was very beautiful. But when she put on the mantilla, there was a sacred beauty that was overwhelming.
On the left side of the sanctuary was a matching side altar and statue of St. Joseph, also with votive lights. St. Joseph never got as many lights as Mary, but he was honored. The statue of St. Joseph embodied a protective presence. To my eyes, he was there to protect and provide for Mary and for the baby Jesus.
Once a year there was a Special Mass for St. Joseph. All the men of the parish would bring the tools of their trade and lay them before the altar. The carpenter brought hammer and saw, and the plumber wrenches, and the electrician his tool belt. There were pitchforks and spades and even a couple of briefcases—all symbols of the work of family men, the men of St. Joseph. The display would be blessed during the Mass and the tools reclaimed afterward. Women are now more equally represented in all these professions, and that is a gain, but I wonder if there is a way to embrace that gain without losing the men of St. Joseph?
The men in the parish were under St. Joseph, and something of his holiness and consecration fell on them. To my eyes, it was a derivative consecration that came by way of service to the Holy Mother and her Holy Child. Thus, before us, every Sunday and every holy day of obligation, was the sacred and holy family speaking to us about the danger, majesty, and holiness of motherhood and about the adventure, nobility, and holiness of fatherhood. That is how I perceived it week by week, and the eyes to see it came to me from contemplating Mary’s veil and the mantillas of the women in the congregation.
I perceived the presence of Mary’s veil outside the church. My father, who was a senior government official, was respectful and courteous to one and all. Mr. Morris drove a truck for the county, and he often worked for my father on the weekend, cutting brush on our hilly gentleman’s farm. It was hard physical work. It was clear to me that my father respected Mr. Morris and respected his work. But it was also clear to me that Mr. Morris was below my father in the social hierarchy.
One day, Mrs. Morris came to bring Mr. Morris a container of lemonade she had made for him. It was clear to me that we were being visited by royalty and that Mrs. Morris and my mother and all the other mothers and grandmothers, all women, had an equal standing and dignity, beside which any difference between Mr. Morris and my father was insignificant. All women, including single women, carried the veil of Mary out of the church and into the world, and their consecration was recognized by the world of men. Or so it seemed to at least one little boy.
I have been taught to look for what is being taught by virtue of its absence. Mary is, for the most part, absent from the Protestant churches and even in the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II she seems less prominent. At Christmas time, with the nativity scene, St. Joseph and the Holy Mother and the Holy Child briefly reappear. For the most part, the presence of the Holy Family does not abide in our churches.
The image of woman most common in our culture is not the Holy Mother, but the other woman described in the Book of Revelation. Our popular images of women are not images of consecration, but—as Carl Trueman has pointed out—images of desecration. When the holiness of woman disappears, the holiness of man disappears, and the holy family disappears.
When the holy family is thus absent from our churches and our society, we should not be surprised that infertility becomes a problem. There is a crisis of fertility in our society. There is a crisis of fertility in our churches. Our churches struggle to retain the children they beget, both literal and spiritual, and struggle to beget new children.
I hear reports that young women in the Roman Catholic Church and in some Anglo-Catholic parishes are again taking the veil and wearing mantillas to Mass. This could be sentimental nostalgia for a time past that was flawed in ways hidden from today’s generation. Or it could be a desire for reconsecration, a desire to come in under the veil of Mary and perhaps bring along some men to become men of St. Joseph.
The Very Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding, dean of the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, is entering his fourth decade as a priest of the Episcopal Church.
