White Religious Habits and A Priest Saying Mass

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I’ve always wondered but I’ve never been in the position to ask…

If a religious priest normally wears a white habit, does he have to wear an alb over it to celebrate Mass? The rubrics say an alb to be worn over your ordinary clothes and his ordinary clothes are his habit. If he was a Franciscan with a brown or gray habit, it would make logical sense to put a white alb over it, but his habit is already white.
 
The alb is always required. The habit can never legitimately be used as a replacement for the alb (Redemptionis Sacramentum specifically addressed this, if you need the exact reference I can post it later).

Whether or not a religious order priest wears the habit under the alb is generally a matter of his own preference. For practical reasons, most do not, at least in my own experience. There might be some orders who have specific rules for their members to wear the habit under the alb, but I don’t know of any.

It’s not so much about the color of the alb or the habit (although in the West, albs are always supposed to be white), instead it’s about the purpose of the garment. A habit is simply not an alb, even one that might look like an alb.
 
At the abbey I’m attached to as oblate, the priest-monks do wear their habits under their albs when they concelebrate. I pity them in summer. Nominally the church is air conditioned but to keep costs down, not so much…
 
I belong to a parish served by Franciscan Friars, and even in the heat of summer, I only recall one Friar ever not wearing his brown habit under the alb.
 
The alb is always required. The habit can never legitimately be used as a replacement for the alb
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Does that apply to the Extraordinary Form? There is one near me celebrated by Franciscan priests and they were a habit with a chasuble and no alb. (I ask only out of academic interest incidentally, I’m sure they know what they are doing).
 
peter26 said:
Does that apply to the Extraordinary Form? There is one near me celebrated by Franciscan priests and they were a habit with a chasuble and no alb. (I ask only out of academic interest incidentally, I’m sure they know what they are doing).
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Usually, I say that “I don’t know” equates to “I shouldn’t try answering” 😉

I don’t know.

Yep. I dd it. :rolleyes:

I’m going to say “I don’t know” but at the same time offer some information that you might find relevant anyway.

In the Extraordinary Form, there are many peculiarities that apply to religious orders. Not religious priests as such, but there are variations in the Missal that apply to particular congregations. One would have to know whether or not the Franciscans have their own peculiarity that permits them to use the habit without an alb.

As far as the EF Missal itself is concerned, the alb is required.
 
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