If you're a Catholic non-profit group that sends priests to guest celebrate Masses at various parishes, in hopes that parishioners will give your organization money, don't send a 50+-year-old priest with a ponytail, unless the church is in the Bay area, Key West, Massachusetts, or other hotbeds of acceptance. That happened at my Mass yesterday morning. The ponytail was disturbing enough, but in addition, the priest was quite infatuated with all his experiences, which he recounted in detail, with the result that I finally had to take my two youngest (ages 2 and 1) out of church part-way through his homily, sermon speech. The kids weren't being bad, but I take my toddlers out of church when (i) they're distracting others outside my pew, or (ii) their constant need for attention is causing me to break a sweat. This morning, I hit the second hurdle after 20 minutes of the speech.
He seemed like a decent enough guy (a leftist, to be sure; he dropped political hints like an ill pigeon), but I couldn't get over the ponytail. I know the modern adage: Don't judge by appearances. But I've never really understood that. What should I judge by? I can't, after all, read a person's heart, mind, or soul. All I have are appearances: looks, actions, words.
I once heard a person say that he knows immediately that a man suffers from some sort of emotional disturbance (I think he referred to arrested development, narcissism, and other problems), if the man is over 50 and wears a ponytail. I tend to agree. What else besides some sort of self-indulgence or desire to shake people up or desire to be different or desire to feel young (all rooted in vanity) would prompt an older man to wear a ponytail?
Maybe it's a form of self-mortification. If it is, it's right up there with "the fools for Christ," who would become stupid, sacrifice their ability to reason, for God. Holy idiocy.
Heck, the ponytail might be flat-out identical.
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Bonus coverage:
Joseph Epstein on the elder's ponytail:
[F]ew things are more dispiriting than a gray ponytail. It suggests aging hippiedom, than which little is sadder: a flower child is one thing, a flower grandfather something else again.
