I ONCE HAD THE HABIT ...

They say the habit does not the monk make.  But as in other professions it does help to be able to distinguish monks from non-monks.  Head-gear helps too.  You see a hood wearing a hoodie and you get the heebie-jeebies.  You see a Friar wearing a capuche, or a Benedictine monk in cowl, and you are reassured (until, perhaps, the mendicant asks you for a donation, or the son of Benedict wants to sell you his monastery's latest Gregorian CD.  That's very unkind.  Monks and Friars are not as bad as modern merchants in the Temple like televangelists or Scientologists intent on signing you up for The Treatment.)  Kings, Priests and Popes bearing crowns, birettas and until recent times triple tiaras, as well as British judges in their ridiculous wigs, are not only recognizable but respected for the office their head-covering represents.  Nuns used to wear ample and often quite absurd habits, to hide their feminine shape, like portly men who prefer not to tuck in their Hawaiian shirt so as to conceal their paunch (we kid ourselves).

Some Catholic religious and priests no longer wear a uniform or even distinguishing apparel, like the clerical collar, presumably to suggest that though men of the cloth they are ordinary people, if not men of the world, after all.  A priest in clericals today is usually making a sartorial statement that he is a traditionalist, a conservative who will have no truck with guitars at Mass and new-fangled Nicene Creeds. Personally I believe there is place for clergy distinguished by their suits and collars, if not, as in my time, black Stetsons or homburgs.  But in spite of the diminution in Mass attendance and sometimes injudicious modifications in the Liturgy, I would hope the Catholic clergy keeps its copes and chasubles and all their gorgeous gold-embroidered vestments with their mysterious symbols like IHS and the Alpha and the Omega. What they are doing is ridiculous and what they are saying is silly.  But keep the choreography and colorful costumes as well as the magnificent music and the enchanting chant.  After all, it's show-business.

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