Mantillas

 In Spain, when I was growing up in the 1950s, women wore mantillas to church. These were gorgeous embroidered affairs, white for unmarried girls and black for married women. Anchored by a hat pin, the mantilla was shaped like a rounded triangle, with the tip grazing the forehead and the two sides hanging down over the collar bones. Before the age of reason, which was held by the church to be seven, instead of mantillas little girls wore small round doilies on top of their head.

Some blame Saint Paul (“any woman who prays…with her head unveiled disgraces her head”), while others blame the early fathers of the church for making women wear veils in church. It is easy in retrospect to rage against Saint Paul and his cronies, who regarded head coverings as a mark of submission. At the time, however, we thought of the mantilla simply as a gender-related sign of respect: men had to uncover their heads, and we had to cover ours. Besides, with its scalloped edges framing the face, and the embroidered flowers and leaves both concealing and revealing the hair beneath, the mantilla made almost any woman look mysterious and alluring.

Nevertheless, we took the head-covering issue seriously. If a woman on her way back from the bakery wanted to stop for a quick visit to the Blessed Sacrament but had left her mantilla at home, she could throw a scarf or even a sweater over her head. Otherwise, she had to skip the visit altogether (God, we were told, understood these things, and would look kindly upon her intention).

Another ostensible reason for the mantilla was to prevent the men of the congregation from being distracted by the lust-inducing sight of female hair. I found this odd, but then you never knew about men. It was their fault after all that, in addition to the mantilla, women had to wear stockings in church, and sleeves long enough to cover their elbows. Still, even granted their penchant for getting aroused by seemingly harmless objects, I figured that if I had been a man I would have found the elaborate, semi-transparent mantilla way more intriguing than a pair of braids or a head of permed curls.

When I arrived at my Catholic high school in Alabama, I saw that girls, though well past the age of reason, wore not mantillas but “chapel veils,” exactly like the little doily that I had cast aside in favor of the more grownup style after my First Communion. And it wasn’t just high school girls who wore these, but also the adult women who filled the pews with their husbands and kids on Sundays. Some ladies wore padded Alice bands with little stiff, dotted veils pulled down coyly over their noses. Others, having dashed into church on the spur of the moment, simply covered their head with a Kleenex, and secured it with a bobby pin.

I interpreted this nonchalant attitude towards head coverings as a sign of American progressivism, which I was all for. But I continued to wear my no-nonsense Spanish mantilla because I thought it more flattering than the doilies. And if it momentarily distracted from his prayers some hapless boy my age, well, so much the better.

As the fifties gave way to the sixties, those tiny chapel veils, perched atop the teased and sprayed, helmet-like hairdos of the time, looked more absurd than ever. By the end of the decade, what with the surging feminist movement and the liberalization of the church after Vatican II, chapel veils and emergency Kleenexes went the way of stockings and garter belts. But the disappearance of head coverings signaled a deeper exodus. Like many of my generation, I put away my missal and my mantilla, and left the church forever. Or so I thought.

The Papal Bossa Nova

I wasn't particularly moved by the big crowds that cheered you in Rio, Francis, or by the babies you kissed--after all, John Paul II was as popular as a rock star and kissed plenty of third-world babies while telling their mothers that using condoms was a sin.

The dancing bishops did make me smile--they reminded me of those end-of-the-school-year shows put on by first-graders:  http://youmedia.fanpage.it/video/aa/UfUh9eSwJ9iQ7Zxv

But then came the extraordinary press conference on the plane back to Rome, when you said about gay priests, "If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?"

That statement is being deconstructed all over the planet.  Fundamentalists of all denominations will see it as an open door to the kind of relativism that leads souls straight to hell.  Liberals, on the other hand, claim that you didn't go far enough.  You didn't declare yourself in favor of gay marriage.  You didn't contradict your predecessor's decrees about the inherent sinfulness of homosexuality.

You didn't go far enough for me either.  But the humble tone of that "who am I to judge?" was so unexpected, so revolutionary, that it makes me think you might just manage to keep the Church from going down the tubes.

Then you went and said that John Paul II had once and for all closed the doors of the priesthood to women.

You softened that by saying that we do not yet have a deep theology of woman in the Church.  I'm not sure what that means, but it implies that the theology of woman would be different from the theology of man, and I am suspicious of that.  I know that men and women are different, but the emphasis on those differences, as opposed to the emphasis on their common humanity, has seldom worked to women's advantage.  And in the long history of the Church the almost exclusive focus on difference has been disastrous.
You also said that you seek a greater role for women in the Church.  But no matter what else you allow them, as long as women are barred from ordination they will continue to be second-class citizens.

One step forward, two steps back--but this is no time for dancing, Francisco.   It's time to march directly towards what is right.

Dear Pope Francis, It's Me Again

I thought you might like to know my opinion of your papacy so far.

It's terrific that you've given up wearing those specially-made red shoes and living in the papal palace, and that you sometimes ride around in an old Fiat.  I like it that you talk about the poor a lot and are not afraid to tell the rich what you think of some of their tactics.  My mother would be happy that you agree with her that wasting food is immoral
.
But why you canonized John Paul II is beyond me.  He may have been instrumental in the downfall of Communism, but despite his cuddly media image he was cruelly conservative, preaching against birth control to women in third-world countries and condemning the use of condoms in the midst of the AIDS epidemic.

On the other hand, I approve of your making good Pope John XXIII a saint, and dispensing with the miracle requirement.  His revolutionary papacy was miracle enough for me.  He's beaming down on you from heaven and whispering advice in your ear.  Listen to him.

So on the whole it's been an encouraging beginning, a B-, I would say.

But now you have to do something for women.

You could put some nuns in charge of something in the Vatican--and not just of making sausages, as John Paul II did.  Despite how much they scared us in grammar school, nuns are about the only sector of the Church that still commands respect.  Give them some big, visible jobs to do.  They'll be terrific.

You could remove the penis as a prerequisite for the priesthood.  It doesn't seem to help make priests more Christ-like, does it?  And the seminaries are almost empty.

You say you have compassion for the poor, but who are most of the world's poor, if not women?  And what, more than too-large families, keeps women poor?  You could transform the lives of millions--and do a big favor for the planet, which you also say you care about--by lifting the Church's proscription on birth control.

 Francisco, haz algo para las mujeres!  We've been waiting for two thousand years.

The Evil Passions Of Men

James Michener, in Iberia, published this list of rules for women, which he found posted in a church in rural Spain in 1943, the year my parents married.  I grew up in Barcelona, but spent summers in the countryside, and although some of these rules don't ring a bell, some do.

Women shall not appear on the streets of this village with dresses that are too tight in those places which provoke the evil passions of men.  Ah, those evil passions.  I heard about them as a child and for years wondered what they were.  "Never trust a man who has a nose on his face," my mother's mother used to admonish me when I reached puberty.  All this caused my girl friends and me to grow up thinking of ourselves as sticks of dynamite, liable to cause widespread damage any minute.


They must never wear dresses that are too short.  By the time the 1950s came around, this was fortunately no longer an issue, because mid-calf skirts were the thing.

They must be particularly careful not to wear dresses that are low-cut in front.  While I mostly chewed my nails or amused myself by staring at the row of hairlines in the pew in front of me during Sunday sermons, I do remember one priest thundering against women who decorated their decolletage with a cross.

It is shameful for women to walk in the streets with short sleeves.  My mother and my aunts certainly wore short sleeves in summer, and no men that I know of burst into flames at the sight of their upper arms.  But they could not appear in church without sleeves down to their elbows.  This widely observed rule caused many problems when Northern Europe discovered Spain as the ultimate vacation spot and the churches were invaded by hordes of scantily dressed, sunburned walkyries.

Every woman who appears in the streets must wear stockings.  That rule had gone by the wayside by the time I was born.  In summer my mother and aunts would drop into church (for a visit with the Blessed Sacrament) in bare legs and espadrilles, though they may have put on stockings for Sunday Mass.  No mention is made of the need, first dictated by Saint Paul, for women to cover their heads in church.  It was too deeply ingrained.  And by "cover" I don't imply little hats, or those eensy "chapel veils" that used to do the job in the U.S.  Women wore mantillas to church, which covered their head and neck and were gorgeously embroidered, semi-transparent, and often more beautiful and more inflaming than the hair they were intended to hide.

Women must not wear transparent or network cloth over those parts which decency requires to be covered.  Must be the same parts that inflamed the evil passions of men.

At the age of twelve girls must begin to wear dresses that reach to the knee, and stockings at all times.  This rule was no longer in operation by the time I came along.

Little boys must not appear in the streets with their upper legs bare. What is this doing on a list of proscriptions for women?  I remember my male contemporaries wearing really short pants until they turned fourteen or so.  I remember their upper legs turning bright red in winter.  Maybe that too inflamed the evil passions of men.


Girls must never walk in out-of-the-way places because to do so is both immoral and dangerous. Obviously the "immoral" part indicates a strong tendency to blame the potential victim.  However, despite my belief that ideally women as well as men should be free to go anywhere, anytime, I think that while we wait for this imperfect world to become perfect it's a good idea for men and women to be led by common sense, and play it safe.

No decent woman or girl is ever seen on a bicycle.  Oh, my rusty, brakeless bicycle on which I rode the dusty summer roads around my grandparents' farm with the smell of rosemary in my nostrils, hoping for a glimpse of a shepherd and his flock under the blazing sun!

No decent woman is ever seen wearing trousers.  I wore not only trousers but shorts in the summer, but I never saw my mother in pants until we went to Ecuador and she had to buy a pair of blue jeans for trudging around in the jungle.

What they call in the cities ‘modern dancing’ is strictly forbidden.  I suspect this referred to dances imported from America, such as the fox-trot, which even when done by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers don't hold a candle in sexiness or inflammatory potential to the most threadbare flamenco danced around a gipsy fire.

(Thanks to Dona artistseyestudio.com for reminding me of these rules.)

All Those Prayers...

During my years in Catholic school, from age six to seventeen, I spent a lot of time praying.  I'd say my morning prayers while I was putting on my uniform.  In school, at the beginning of each class, we would stand up and say a short prayer, like a Hail Mary.  Sometimes we would sing.  I especially liked "Come Holy Ghost," the English translation of the 9th century Gregorian chant, "Veni Creator Spiritus."  In times of stress, such as before an algebra test, I would sing it silently to myself as I waited for the test paper to be placed on my desk.  At the end of each class we would all stand up again and say another prayer.

Two prayers per class, six classes a day, five days a week makes 240 prayers a month.  And that was not all.  My high school had a chapel where daily Mass was said before first period.  Attendance was not required, but sometimes I would go.  On Fridays confessions were heard in the chapel.  You said your prayer of contrition--mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa--and then whatever prayers the priest assigned you as penance .  During lunch period--and this seems incredible now--my friends and I would often whip out our chapel veils and stop by the chapel for a visit to the Blessed Sacrament.

At home, before dinner, instead of a formal blessing we would just cross ourselves.  But sometimes in the evening my parents would  pray the Rosary, led by my father:  five Our Fathers, fifty Hail Marys, five Glorias, and the litany of the Virgin Mary.  My father recited the litany in Latin, and it used to feel like a reward for sitting through those endless Hail Marys:

...Mystical rose,
Tower of David,
Tower of ivory,
House of gold,
Ark of the covenant,
Gate of heaven,
Morning star...

During the long May evenings my parents and I would kneel before the statue of Mary that lived on the chest of drawers in their bedroom and say the special prayers of the "Month of Mary."

And in all seasons, before falling asleep, I would do an "examination of conscience" before saying a prayer to my Guardian Angel to which my  mother had added various petitions directed to God Himself, such as "let Daddy have plenty of good work," and "let me have a little brother or sister."  The latter was granted the year I turned sixteen.  Who said prayers don't work?

On Sundays we went to Mass and Communion.

After I married, and my father died, and the Church messed up badly on its birth control policies, I stopped all that--morning prayers, evening prayers, the Rosary, the Mass, the works.  Suddenly I had a lot of extra time on my hands.

Now that, a half century later, the vicissitudes of life have steered me on the path of Buddhist spirituality, I meditate in the morning, reciting a mantra that often feels as mechanical as the Rosary used to, and doing my best to tame my "monkey mind."  As I undertake various tasks during the day, I try to remember to center myself.  Before I go to sleep at night, I focus on my breath and do a little metta. 

It feels amazingly familiar and recognizable, like an old friend you haven't seen in years and who shows up wearing exotic clothes.  The habit and discipline of inwardness, instilled by my parents and by the nuns who succeeded each other like beads on the rosary of my school years, has come back into my life.

Hope...Or Not

Thinking about hope lately, I put together a short list of some of the contradictory things that have been written about it:

"Hope is the thing with feathers/that perches in the soul" (Emily Dickinson)

"...Hope, like a bat,/strikes the walls with timid wing,/bangs its head on rotted ceilings..." (Baudelaire)

"The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man..."  (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

"Abandon all hope, you who enter here."  (Dante--inscription on the gates of Hell)

"Abandon Hope and embrace Joy."  (Spinoza, with thanks to Elizabeth)

"We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment." (Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun and teacher)

...and so on.  What do you say?