Changes in priests' collars

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Tarpeian_Rock

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Many pictures I see of priests - typically out in public - during the 1920’s - 1940’s show them wearing a solid white “dog collar” (for lack of a better term). At some point that seems to have changed into what we today call the “Roman Collar” – black with the white tab showing. Just wondering what led to each style and why the dominant style changed.
 
Tarpeian_Rock said:
Many pictures I see of priests - typically out in public - during the 1920’s - 1940’s show them wearing a solid white “dog collar” (for lack of a better term). At some point that seems to have changed into what we today call the “Roman Collar” – black with the white tab showing. Just wondering what led to each style and why the dominant style changed.
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In the US, the dog collar got identified with Anglicanism so Catholicism went with the Roman Collar.
 
Dog collar is a very poor choice of word. Most priests take great offense to it.:mad:
 
pianistclare said:
Dog collar is a very poor choice of word. Most priests take great offense to it.:mad:
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Sorry, but I’ve heard numerous priests - including my own pastor - use precisely that term. And I put it in quotes. And I qualified it by saying “for lack of a better term.” If you are accusing me of deliberately offending or disrespecting priests, you are sorely mistaken. Do you perhaps know its technical name?
 
They wear a clerical shirt with a tab collar.

I’m glad your priest is not so sensitive…but around here they would not be pleased.
 
I’ve seen non American Priests wear that collar (that isn’t Roman). I have also seen some American Religious order Priests wear it, but I don’t remember the order
 
I am no expert on the clerical collars, but I suspect that thinking of the tab or notch collar as Roman and the full round white collar as Anglican or Protestant is in error. That may be the custom in the UK or US, but not universally.
 
I found an article form the UK in which they used the term dog collar about a dozen times, and urged Anglican clerics not to wear the “dog collar” because they were being attacked and killed by extremists.
So yeah, it must be a British thing,
 
The clerical collar was invented by the Presbyterian Church. I believe the solid white was one of the earlier forms and the smaller white notch a latter style favored by Catholics. The origins are adaptations of historical styles of dress with a desire to have distinguished clerical dress.
 
Wikipedia has quite an article on the “clerical collar”.
2 highlights:
By 1840, Anglican clergy developed a sense of separation between themselves and the secular world. One outward symbol of this was the adoption of distinctive clerical dress.[4] This had started with the black coat and white necktie which had been worn for some decades. By the 1880s this had been transmuted into the clerical collar, which was worn almost constantly by the majority of clergy for the rest of the period."

" Prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) the practice of Roman Catholic clergy wearing the clerical collar as street-dress, tended to be found only in those countries where Catholicism was the minority religion. In the 1960s, many clergy who lived in countries where Catholicism was the dominant religion, began to wear the clerical collar rather than the cassock."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_collar
 
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