Thoughts on collarless Priests?

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Correlation vs. causation.

It’s illogical to say that being out of a habit causes heterodoxy.

There are plenty of heterodox priests and nuns in cassocks and habits.
 
Actually it makes me uncomfortable. Maybe it’s a matter of taste?
 
I guess. Just as it may have made Christians uncomfortable to see a presbyter/priest dress differently in AD 115.

Things change over time.

It’s always dangerous to uphold a changing norm as if it were essential or part of the Faith. Again, first Christians wouldn’t have thought much about clerical garb.
 
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just curious. What would you think if the Pope frequently wore a tie and a blazer with slacks and a papal pin to blend in with the presidents and prince ministers of the world? What if that was his standard dress everyday?
 
No I wouldn’t want that.

But I think you’re misunderstanding me.

I just have issue with people trying to uphold some non-essential and making it a key part of the Faith.

Now, the Pope’s garb has certainly changed over time. He didn’t always wear white, for example. And the hatwear has changed (I’m glad he doesn’t wear a triple tiara anymore — I think it wouldn’t be understood in today’s culture).
 
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Yeeee, but signs are only signs when we give them the meaning.

What is inherent to a white rectangle that makes it identify an ordained priest? Nothing.

I’m just saying we need to be careful how we express the matter. Again, even 1,000 years ago, today’s priest wouldn’t be identified as such. Different clothing then.
 
The Jesuits I know, and also several other priests in religious orders, are referred to “pater N” which is Latin for father/dad.
 
About the roman collar… If the white collar means nothing, the black clothing of priests express their death to the world and service to he church. Parish priests are there to aid our sick souls. It is very comforting as a Christian to be able to distinctly identify a priest.
 
It seems an act of cowardice and a lack of charity, not making oneself known as a priest, unable to heal souls in confessions.

An Opus Dei priest? Won’t happen.
 
But St. Ignatius and other Jesuits still wore traditional parish priestly attire.
 
Maybe to you the dress if a priest is important. It is not to me.

I also think that allowing seminarians to wear clerical garb outside the seminary should be stopped, until they are at least ordained as Deacons, and I think all Deacons should be allowed to wear a collar if they so choose. In my diocese, a transitional Deacon can wear a collar, where a permanent Deacon cannot. :roll_eyes:🤔

As to habits, one must look to the Constitution of whatever particulargroup you are looking at to see what the intention was.
St.Teresa chose the sari -style habit because that was what women wore in India. She did not want to be “set apart”, her and her sisters needed to blend in to do the work they did.
 
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Gabika50 said:
By contrast, seminarians that are niether ordained deacons or priests are doing the ordained a big diservice when they where a collar they never earned. Many I noticed never corrected people when they were addressed as father when they were not ordained.
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I disagree with you here. I don’t see any issue with seminarians wearing a cassock. And I personally, like it when I see deacons wearing the gray clerical collar, and personally, I wish it would be OK for them to wear a cassock.

Now, most seminarians do NOT wear clerical suit. They wear a cassock only. When they wear a suit, it’s typically a regular black suit with a regular white shirt and black tie.

In other words, in my diocese, Seminarians wear cassocks on the seminary campus and at Catholic Churches. But when traveling, they wear secular clothes (and when traveling on church business, they wear a white shirt with black tie & black suit). The only exception are the temporary deacons, who may wear a black clerical, if it’s called for.

I also don’t think there is an issue with confusing seminarians and deacons for priests. After all, few people see seminarians and deacons in clerical garb around town. They are far more likely to mistake an Anglican or Lutheran minister for a Catholic priest out in public than they are to mistake a seminarian or deacon for a priest.

God bless.
 
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Yup they blended in but had a specific color scheme that they were and are to wear so one may identify them as a sister of charity. You can definitely identify them as a particular group that symbolizes charity and healing. “Go and find the women wearing white with blue stripes they will help you.”
 
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Because that is what their founder wanted.

The men in the Missionaries if Charity would be indistinguishable from any other “working poor” man in India.

There is this romanticized notion of habit begins to really bug me. One must look to the intention of the founder and the Constitutions and allow them to decide what is best for them and their mission, not what appeals to a nostalgia of a time that never existed.
 
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A priest’s mission is souls.

The most important thing any priest every does - regardless of “mission” is to bring Jesus to them in the Sacraments, mainly the Eucharist and of course Sacramental Confession.

If you don’t know a priest is a priest, you won’t ask for confession.

This robs souls of serenity while the priest “does his mission”.
 
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It robs souls of serenity that would have been received in Sacramental Confession, had they know the priest was a priest.
 
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