I know that if I was elected pope one of the things I would do is to have all priests wear the cassock and all traditional clerical clothing would be reinstated.
The pope only has that kind of authority over religious, not over the diocesan and other secular clergy. They do not make any vows of obedience to him, only to the local bishop and it is restricted to matters pertaining to ministry, not personal things such as dress. There are some bishops who have dress codes while their priests are on duty. They can do that.
View attachment 8556 If you look around the internet you will find pictures of the pope’s secretary and him walking and praying the rosary. Don Giorgio is wearing a clerical shirt with grey pants and brown shoes. They look grey.
As far as religious are concerned, the pope can demand whatever he wants of us, under holy obedience, except one thing. He cannot order that religious disobey their rule or their founder. Once the holy rule is approved by a previous pope, it must first be changed by the pope. The pope cannot command against the rule. He would be commanding religious to sin. If the rule and constitutions call for secular dress, then the religious must comply until the rule or constitutions are changed. Some founders prohibited the use of habits or identifying garb.
Mother Teresa forbade it among her male religious and her sisters may only wear the Indian Sari. Males and females have a very explicit mandate that they are to avoid any semblance of European or Western religious life. That’s why their practices and their habit are very Hindu. The brothers are to dress and behave like Indian men, regardless of their national origins or the place where they live and work. If you visit their general house in Rome, they all wear the same white shirt the working Indian man wears, with slacks and sandals. But when you look at the faces they are a mix of Westerners and Indians.
The founder of the Brothers of Mary prohibitted habits way back in the 17th century. They wore the common dress of teachers in their day. The idea was to be anonymous.
St. Vincent de Paul also wrote habits out of the statutes of his Daughters of Charity. They always referred to it as a custom, not a rule. That’s how they got around the point and wore the blue with the coronette. He also mentioned anonymity in their statutes.
For our nuns, St. Clare wrote that the abbess alone should decide what constituted a religious garb. That’s why you do not find two Poor Clare houses that wear the same habit. In each house the abbess decides or calls for the sisters to vote on it.
In the case of our friars, St. Francis said that it had to be a tunic with a hood, but it was not to be rigidly enforced across the order. Each Minister was to decide what was best in keeping with poverty, culture and comfort. When you get a few hundred Franciscan men together you see many variations on the same theme. The one common thread (no pun intended) is the chord. We have worn that since 1209. It began because it was a symbol of chastity. It has been preserved in honor of St. Francis.
The Dominicans, on the other hand, had very explicit directions in their constitutions. St. Dominic described every detail of the habit. However, he too left the priors the freedom to adopt other clothing according to culture and climate.
Any pope who would want to impose some kind of habit on every religious would have to first go back and overrule the founders, which a pope can do. But I doubt that any pope would want to do so.
As far as secular deacons, priests and bishops are concerned, these men are not consecrated men. The dress rules for them are going to depend on the diocesan bishop and only as it pertains to work, not to what they wear when they are off duty. If a pope took to governing the dress of secular deacons, priests and bishops, then he would be imposing something on them that is not appropriate to their secular state.
These matters are not as simple as they appear on the outside. That’s why the Church speaks about them in generalities, allowing each person to act and choose according to the statutes that are appropriate for his state in life.
Father Mitch Pacwa once said it best, “If God had wanted me to be like the friars, he would have called me to be a friar, instead of a clerk regular.” He was responding to someone who called his show and asked a similar question about why the Jesuits were not like the Franciscans on EWTN. I believe that he appeared a little taken aback by the question, almost surprised that a Catholic would not know this answer.
Let’s not make the pope’s job more complicated than it already is.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
