Am I alone in thinking that those pointy conehead hats on higher catholic clerics looks like a saturday night live spoof on the Coneheads who came to dinner? They look really wierd in America, don't they. They don't really resonate with anyone you see or think of in scripture - Jesus walking along the Jordan dismantled his tall pointy top hat the size of an opened umbrella on his head and gave it to Peter to hold while he healed the blind man bending over his flowing lacey robes to pick dirt from the ground to make mud to smear on the man's eyes. Huh? OK-you are right, I made that up. Jesus didn't wear tall pointy conehead hats.
He probably did wear a yamulka- probably not a flaming pink one. Shall I wear my fuschia yamulka or my hot red lipstick colored one? Hmmmm.
I can't speak for the Fuschia Yamulkas (although I know no Jewish color regulation on them so-hey, go wild)- but I can imagine where the conehead hat tradition comes from.
Before the days of great sound systems and microphones, when a preacher preached in a great huge gothic cathedral with high arches, the hat simply identified who was talking-because if you are sitting anywhere from the middle to the back you cannot see or identify who is speaking from the front. The hat mirrors the arched pinnacle above his head where he likely would be speaking. And likely there were a number of clerics surrounding him concelebrating or doing various other things on the altar-so you couldn't tell who in fact was talking. When you can see who it is who is speaking you can sometimes hone in and listen better.
So the hat could have originally been a - Yoo-Hoo Over Here- I'm the guy talking! kind of visual aid.
It attached to the guys giving the sermons (homilies)- who were the highest clergy available in the area. When the church migrated from those magnificent European gothic cathedrals the hats went with them.
And that's when they started to look goofy as all get out. But if you go to a real Mass in a real European
Gothic Cathedral, and hear a guy in the hat, you start to appreciate that you can see who is talking by identifying that Cat in the Hat.
So that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
Here Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran wears more head appropriate gear in India with the Sikhs. By covering his head with a napkin. Like all the Sikhs around him there. When in Rome......
I like this guy. click Here to learn a little more
So in Yankee Stadium a bishop should wear a baseball hat. Talking to a bunch of miners in West Virginia he should wear a miner's cap, in talking to policemen he can wear a police hat (no, you can't impersonate one.) A cardinal in a baseball cap - that works if you are in America pretty well. Wouldn't you like to see it?
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