Black Skirts and Funny Hats
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I grew up Catholic in the “old church,” that is, before the Vatican Council of the early 1960s when the world’s bishops met in Rome to “turn the church upside down,” as some observers put it.
My parents, four siblings and I were practicing Catholics all our lives. We all went to Catholic elementary schools (grades 1-8) and most went to Catholic high schools, taught by men and women members of religious orders. Two of us went to the seminary and became priests. (I received a dispensation from the church after six years and returned to the lay state.)
Masses, including the music, were in Latin. The sanctuary surrounding the altar and the nave of the church, where the people mostly knelt, were separated by the communion rail. You had to fast before going to communion and ate no meat on Fridays. Most Catholics attended Mass at least once a week and observed many popular devotions. That was then. This is now.
Happy Childhood
I should add that mine was a happy childhood and part of that was my experience with the faith of my family. I was always treated fairly - even lovingly in the best sense of that word - by priests and nuns. Still, I questioned some things about Catholicism and still do.
As a seminary student for four years of college and four years of theology, I wore a cassock – a black, full-length dress - daily. And after being ordained, I wore it for masses, but not much else. Though some priests wore them even when on the street, I wore a black suit or black shirt and collar and never a cassock apart from liturgical uses.
Why am I writing about this subject, which seems to have little relevance to most people’s daily lives and the search for God? Because I read a recent article in America Magazine called, “Priests are wearing cassocks again. Should you care?”
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The article says that priests, especially young ones, can now be seen wearing cassocks not only at mass under their liturgical vestments, but on the street and even at baseball games.
According to the article, the cassock wearer appears to be saying: “…Behold, here is Priest! …Father has entered the vestibule of the church or the Trader Joe’s and will gladly receive your somewhat reserved awe. Gladly.”
The message sent by wearing a cassock – or a biretta, the funny-looking, square hat also worn by priests of the past and adopted again by some priests - is the opposite of what it should be, in my opinion. After centuries of attempts by the church to emphasize how priests are separate from lay people, the Vatican Council emphasized and many popes since have said that priests should be servants, not members of a privileged clerical caste.
Personally, I believe that Catholic clergy in
general – when on the street or in church – should drastically reduce the
number and extravagance of clerical and liturgical dress. It’s all from a
different age, and, I believe, is irrelevant and confusing to most people,
Catholic or otherwise.
Smell of the Sheep
Using one of his colorful metaphors, Pope
Francis put it this way in an address to Catholic priests in 2013: “This is what I am
asking you: be shepherds with the smell of the sheep, shepherds in the midst of
their flock, fishers of men.”
The first model,
of course, should be Jesus himself, who eschewed honors, titles and special
dress. In Matthew’s gospel, he rebukes “the scribes and Pharisees,” partly
because of their desire to be set apart by their dress.
“They do all their deeds to be seen by men;
for they make their phylacteries broad (small boxes containing passages from
the Torah, strapped to the forehead and arm) and their fringes long, and they
love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues….”
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