Opinion: What’s the miter?

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As I mentioned in a recent post, a lot is being made—too much, I think—of the fact that all five Supreme Court justices in the majority in the ‘partial-birth’ abortion case are Catholics. Predictably, at least one editorial cartoonist was unable to resist the temptation to portray the Catholic five as wearing bishops’ miters. Equally predictably, the head of the Catholic League has jumped on the cartoon.

What was interesting to this former altar boy was that the Catholic League described the miter as a “papal hat.” Yes, the pope can be seen wearing a miter (though not the skyscraper model that went out of fashion after Vatican II). But the miter is not a peculiarly papal chapeau. It is worn by every Catholic bishop—not to mention Anglican ones.

The distinctive papal hat is the bejeweled tiara or ‘triple crown’ that was retired when Pope John Paul I simplified what used to be called the papal ‘coronation.’ The tiara hung on in papal heraldry for a while after that, but in Benedict XVI’s coat of arms it has been replaced by the relatively humble miter.

Conservative Catholics, who are eagerly awaiting an order by Benedict permitting wider use of the Latin Mass, would love to see the tiara make a comeback, too. So, I suspect, would editorial cartoonists.