Blog poll on head coverings

[Bakuryokuso]

Do Protestants usually observe these biblical injunctions about head covering and women being silent in Church?

Or did they do away with them, invoking the infamous zeitgeist argument?

Varies with the sect. The 'Plain People' (Amish, Old Order Mennonites, Dunkards, etc.) veil all the time.

I suppose the mainstream "bible believing" crowd happily jumps in the zeitgeist bandwagon when it comes to these questions.

It's a clear demonstration of how they forfeit the word of God.

It's one of the terrible ironies that led me to the Catholic church. The Evangelical/Charismatic church I attended before converting, like many Prots, loudly proclaims they only follow the Bible but they add their own tradition to skew scripture as they see fit to allow female pastors and whatnot.

[Vetus Ordo]

Do Protestants usually observe these biblical injunctions about head covering and women being silent in Church?

Or did they do away with them, invoking the infamous zeitgeist argument?

Varies with the sect. The 'Plain People' (Amish, Old Order Mennonites, Dunkards, etc.) veil all the time.

I suppose the mainstream "bible believing" crowd happily jumps in the zeitgeist bandwagon when it comes to these questions.

It's a clear demonstration of how they forfeit the word of God.

It's one of the terrible ironies that led me to the Catholic church. The Evangelical/Charismatic church I attended before converting, like many Prots, loudly proclaims they only follow the Bible but they add their own tradition to skew scripture as they see fit to allow female pastors and whatnot.

Too bad the liberal catholics follow the same rationale.

[Bakuryokuso]

Too bad the liberal catholics follow the same rationale.

And this is really the failure of the V2 pastoral council. they tried making the true church more like the heretical church to attract the heretics but drove off the true faithful instead! argh!

[Augstine Baker]

The tried to make everything all Cardinal Numinous.

[m.PR]

For those wondering about the abandonment of the practice of head covering, I found an article that explains the how and why behind it. It's here (PDF warning). I haven't read all of it yet, but at least what I'll quote below is pretty interesting. Via The Catholic Wife:

Admittedly the vast majority of women were told that Vatican II initiated the change. (Please read the documents to find it. It is not there!) And since they, like most Catholics, depended on the clergy to educate, they were badly misdirected.

In 1973, a local Catholic paper reported that the ladies could throw away their hankies. (The word hankie was used to mock the wearing of the veil as insignificant.) The article was referring to a document from Rome stating that the veil was of minor importance. They conveniently failed to mention what prompted this remark. It was in response to liberals petitioning Rome to allow the ordination of women. Their argument was basically this: Since the Church allowed women to break Canon Law, Scripture, and Tradition in the matter of the veil, then why not break the teaching of the Church concerning the ordination of women? (This is the normal consequence of unchecked disobedience; it is never satisfied.) As you can see, the statement from Rome concerning the veil was quite appropriate. The veil is of little importance when compared with the ordination of women. It is quite easy for a woman to rebelliously walk into a church without a veil, but she cannot rebelliously ordain herself. Such women will defy any law if it gets in the way of what they want.

Because I like quoting stuff, I'd also like to quote one of the comments below Father Z's poll, one that made a lot of sense to me. Emphasis mine:

I’m female and wear hats in church and I voted YES. Whether it should be obligatory, I don’t know, but I (tentatively) voted yes on that as well. The strong promotion of the practice from St. Paul in the New Testament seems to me an argument for making it mandatory. Another argument for making it mandatory is that many women who want to cover their heads in church avoid doing so for fear of meeting with hostility (which is a real possibility) or appearing self-righteous, or because their pastors tell them not to; if the practice were mandatory, then women following the Biblical custom would have the support of the Church.

As of now, the Church leaves women free to cover or not, but those that do are met with attitudes such as, “Well, fine, if you want to,” “I don’t see why it matters if you have a piece of cloth on your head, but whatever, as long as you don’t think you’re holier than me,” or “Why are you following that outdated custom?” etc, and these are the “accepting” attitudes. This belittling of a custom strongly supported by St. Paul in the Bible puzzles me greatly; and yes, I have read all the arguments about how only prostitutes didn’t cover their hair and it was cultural, etc, but these arguments do not sound terribly different to me from the arguments that the attitudes towards homosexuality in the New Testament were merely culturally conditioned. St. Paul attributed spiritual symbolism and theological significance to the head-covering practice, relating it to the heavenly hierarchy and the relation of woman to man and Christ to God; he didn’t say, “Women should cover their heads for now, because otherwise they look like prostitutes.”

That said, I fully respect the Church’s right to keep the practice non-mandatory, and perhaps that is best for now. I will continue to cover my head, because it is spiritually meaningful for me, and because I haven’t found a good reason not to follow this custom which is both Biblical and traditional.

[Augstine Baker]

Except it is obligatory.  Who cares what some woman thinks about whether it is or isn't or what she's comfortable or what SEEMS to be important to her, how she's concerned about her neighbor's attitudes towards her...etc....etc...  Again, the lack of concern for objectivity is in evidence.

[Aragon]

It's mandatory in my church...

Yeah.  But we all know about your church...

Hahaha! Whatever!  Lol!
Are all SSPX churches like mine? I've always wondered that

Well, what's yours like? The sspx in my city has a notice saying women should cover their heads and most do. At the FSSP a lot do but a sizable minority don't. Maybe 60-40?

[Vetus Ordo]

Female head covering is a clear biblical injunction. There's no way around it.

The failure on the part of churchmen to enforce this law does not negate it in any sense whatsoever. The Church does not go against Holy Writ.

[m.PR]

I've finished reading the article (PDF) mentioned above, and it was good. Here's some more of the juicy parts:

I would now like to share with you a few events that took place over the past thirty years to illustrate that this whole matter of the demeaning of the veil was a plot orchestrated by those who were determined to destroy the family. Many in the Church were unaware of what was happening, and it remains the same today. Like many fathers in the home, many fathers in the Church do not see things happening until it hits them in the face. Even then they are still not sure what happened. (Married women are well aware of what I mean.) When the shepherds are preoccupied and are not vigilant, the wolves are there to take advantage of the situation.

Bishop Maurice Schexnayder, a holy bishop in the Lafayette Diocese back in the seventies, when referring to the veil picked up the Bible and read from
I Corinthians 11. He said, "Now, this is the Word of God; the Church cannot change it." Was Bishop Schexnayder correct or not? He later wrote to us and stated that he could assure us that the Church has never changed its teaching about the veil. His predecessor when asked, "Is it a sin if a woman disobeys the Church's teaching by not wearing a veil?", replied, "It would be a sin if she knew what she was doing." One could assume that the way to keep people from sinning is to keep them in ignorance. Few today are teaching. Most are just explaining things away as "nonessentials."

Now nonessential has become a popular word today. [...] Rejection of the veil is just an exterior manifestation of an inner problem. Intelligent people know that truly successful
people are those who do the things that the unsuccessful think is not necessary ( Nonessential ). One could avoid breaking any doctrine of the Church and still destroy his marriage. Catholics who have good marriages go far beyond the letter of the law. They go to the spirit of the law and are actually freed from the law, for they have risen above the law. This is what liberation truly is, rising above the law, not getting permission to break the law through unrelenting disobedience.

[...] Ask yourself this question. If the Pope wanted the veil dropped, why is it that all of our Presidents who visited the Holy Father in Rome were instructed to have their wives and daughters wear a veil? Be sure to keep in mind that, except for Kennedy, they were all Protestants.

To further validate my point was the article in a popular woman's magazine which told of a lady's dilemma with that horrible veil. This lady, the head of one of the feminist organizations, was telling of her papal visit with the then reining pontiff, Pope Paul VI. She was told that she would have to wear a veil and a dress at her papal visit. She related that she had no problem with the dress, but she did have a problem with wearing the veil. She proceeded to explain how she and a friend combined a comb with a veil on top, structured in such a way that the veil would not touch her head. Unlike our good Catholic women, this feminist leader was well aware of the meaning behind the veil.

[...] We have demonstrated that though few in the Church defended the wearing of the veil, it is clear that it was disobedience that ruled the day and trashed it. It has been demonstrated that neither the
Church nor the Pope ever said that women should abandon the veil. So, this being the case, from whom are our Catholic women getting their marching orders? Or another way of putting it is, who is most influencing our Catholic women? The answer can be found in the National Organization of Women Handbook. Please read carefully the following quotes taken from the N.O.W. Handbook. It has some very interesting information that you truly need to know and seriously ponder. We read under A. Religion Resolutions, " Because the wearing of a head covering by women at religious services is a symbol of subjection within many churches, NOW recommends that all chapters undertake an effort to have all women participate in a "national unveiling" by sending their head coverings to the task force chairman. At the Spring meeting of the task force of women and religion, these veils will be publicly burned to protest the second class status of women in all churches. (Dec., 1968)"

Well, one must concede, these feminists were extremely successful in getting Catholic women to not only break Canon Law, but to go directly against Holy Scripture. These feminists were truly courageous, and their efforts have paid off; sad to say, to their own detriment, and that of all the women of America. Let's continue. " Take the lead in uniting women of all denominations and religious groups to work together to support efforts to recognize the right of women to be ordained in religious bodies where that right is still denied." As previously mentioned, stopping a woman from rebelliously walking into church without a veil is impossible. Ordination is much more difficult a hurdle for them to jump. Thirty years have passed and they are still fighting, while our clergy ( for the most part ) have hoisted the white flag.

And last but not least we have this quote. "NOW will challenge the tax exempt status of the Catholic Church since it is lobbying against abortion law repeal. (Apr., 1971)"

As stated before, these nice little ladies had their own (flag) veil burning. Did you notice the attitude they held regarding our Catholic Church? Could you possibly be one of their misinformed followers? Why would any Catholic want to adopt a practice that was promulgated by such people? Finding a logical explanation to justify it would be quite hard.

[Aragon]

Female head covering is a clear biblical injunction. There's no way around it.

The failure on the part of churchmen to enforce this law does not negate it in any sense whatsoever. The Church does not go against Holy Writ.

But there are also some things found in sacred scripture that are purely disciplinary and can be abolished by the Church. Dietary laws would be one of these. Wouldn't female head coverings be a discipline not a doctrine?