Your Wife is Wearing What? Men, Veils, and the Mystery of Femininity

The strangest thing happened a few months ago. My wife covered her head during Mass. I’ll never forget the moment when I first glanced up to see her noble cranium veiled in a strange and beautiful cut of lace. Whoa.
Years earlier, my good friend Sam (the man behind the wheel of this Catholic Gentleman rig) had the same experience. One day he looks up from his prayers and…whoa. His bride’s head—the land of the free, the home of the brave—is covered over in nothing less than that medieval throwback, the mantilla.
What should a Catholic man do when his wife starts wearing a chapel veil? What will people say? What if people in the neighboring pew think you’re a misogynist pig? What if the aging nuns, the ones who worked so hard to get out of the habit, throw you nasty glares during the passing of the peace? They know all about fellas like you. Head coverings can be as dangerous a subject for men as women, and so it’s a good idea to know what they’re all about.
You’ve probably heard it before. Chapel veils are the sexist leftovers of a chauvinistic Church, St. Paul was blinded by his bigoted culture, yadda yadda. The women who cover their heads during worship probably have husbands who think they ought always to be pregnant, barefoot, and in the kitchen. No one will come out and say it straight, but the social bubble that will suddenly surround your family sends the message: you are a nasty, brutish caveman, and if your wife were not so submissive and weak she’d leave you faster than you can say “First Corinthians Eleven.”
But this is the thing that every Catholic husband and father needs to remember: being pregnant is awesome, and so is cooking—more awesome than your so-called