Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
We hope you enjoy your visit!
You're currently viewing Catholic CyberForum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our online cyberparish, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.
Join our community!
Messages posted to this board must be polite and free of abuse, personal attacks, blasphemy, racism, threats, harrassment, and crude or sexually-explicit language.
If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Suitable ecclesiastical dress
Topic Started: Thursday, 10. February 2011, 21:50 (1,993 Views)
Deacon Robert
Member Avatar

And you are addressed as? Professor, Sir, Mr..., or what (Gerry?) on other formal occassions? Priests are no different. They deserve the same respect for their vocation as you do for yours. I personally don't give a rat's a!! how I am addressed by the public. I do however reserve some intimate and familiar forms of my name to family and a limited amount of close friends.
The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
christyemily

Rose of York,
Perhaps status and vestments equals a generous family member giving an expensive Christmas, Birthday or other present.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
christyemily

Rose of York,
Perhaps status and vestments equals a generous family member giving an expensive Christmas, Birthday or other present.

I did it again,double click!
Edited by christyemily, Sunday, 13. February 2011, 01:29.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Rose of York
Member Avatar
Administrator
christyemily
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 01:27
Rose of York,
Perhaps status and vestments equals a generous family member giving an expensive Christmas, Birthday or other present.
Did you not see that my post was about the distraction, rather than the price?

Quote:
 
I am intrigued by the vestments priests wear according to their status. Bishops wear very expensively made mitres, the chasubles worn by the Pope and other bishops are of higher quality than those worn by the majority of priests. Why is this? I find it distracts from the reason for them. The priest of whatever rank is representing Christ. Vestments must be worthy. "Posh" vestments just give me the impression they are intended to highlight the importance of the wearer's status in the hierarchy but that is irrelevant. From the consececr4ation onwards THE High Price is present. He is the important one.


I cringe when I see televised Cathedral and Basilica liturgies. Who can blame people unfamiliar with the Mass and other ceremonies, for getting the impression it is all about the Pope or some archbishop, not God?
Keep the Faith!

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Penfold
Member Avatar

I am aware that some vestments are very elaborate but they are works of dedicated people, often nuns in their convents and embroiderers whose gift to the church is to provide vestments fitting for the most sacred celebration in the church. How many of you put a good cloth on the table when entertaining guests or light candles and decorate your houses with flowers, should we not do the same in the House of God.
I have a very fine gold vestment that was given to me for the celebration of the millennium by some parishioners, I wear it at Easter and for Christmas. I also have a set of stoles that were embroidered by a friend who has since died, should I have refused their gift. As Deacon Robert has said many vestments have a story to tell about who made them and I think it would be a very sad day when people who have the gift of creating such beautiful vestments should be denied the freedom to use that gift in the service of the church. As for distraction I actually find it more distracting to see priests in a beautiful church dressed in off the peg vestments that are quite frankly the clerical version of the Shell suit, cheap, nasty and barely functional.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Rose of York
Member Avatar
Administrator
Penfold2
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 02:30
I am aware that some vestments are very elaborate but they are works of dedicated people, often nuns in their convents and embroiderers whose gift to the church is to provide vestments fitting for the most sacred celebration in the church.
What is the reason for them being so elaborate? Some of them are encrusted with jewels. How do we decide what is fit for the most sacred celebration? The Mass is just as sacred in a humble little chapel in the jungle as it is in a Cathedral.

Quote:
 
How many of you put a good cloth on the table when entertaining guests or light candles and decorate your houses with flowers, should we not do the same in the House of God.

Yes, but in moderation.
Keep the Faith!

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Penfold
Member Avatar

Rose of York
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 03:11
Penfold2
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 02:30
I am aware that some vestments are very elaborate but they are works of dedicated people, often nuns in their convents and embroiderers whose gift to the church is to provide vestments fitting for the most sacred celebration in the church.
What is the reason for them being so elaborate? Some of them are encrusted with jewels. How do we decide what is fit for the most sacred celebration? The Mass is just as sacred in a humble little chapel in the jungle as it is in a Cathedral.

Quote:
 
How many of you put a good cloth on the table when entertaining guests or light candles and decorate your houses with flowers, should we not do the same in the House of God.

Yes, but in moderation.
In moderation yes but also I would suggest in proportion. What is suitable for use in a jungle is would not be suitable in a cathedral. Some of the finest churches built in Victorian Britain where built in what were then the poorest communities and they were packed by people who found the rich ornamentation brought something wonderful into the drab colourless lives. Some of the vestments may be ornate but that is because they were made for churches that where magnificent and where to the liturgy quite rightly excited all the senses. I am no lover of the Pius X lobby yet in one thing they are right, since Vat II parish liturgy has degenerated to being utilitarian and drab, we have lost much of the richness that once excited, not distracted, us in our prayer. When the words, music, incense and vestments all added to the prayer that proclaimed the glory of God. In most parishes today most people are required to endure a mass that is reduced to its bare essentials with tuneless, and often meaningless hymns, no incense and drab vestments that reflect the politically correct notions of priests and liturgists who have lost sight of the true purpose of the celebration of the Mass, to bring people into the presence of God that we may share in His Body and Blood and rejoice in our salvation.
A soup and role may be a nutritious meal when it is all one has or all that ones health permits but it is a false witness to serve soup and a role to ones guests when one has a larder full of rich food and fine wine, to sit ones guests at a trestle table covered with a paper cloth and plastic cutlery and plates and picnic beakers when you have a proper dining table, rich linen, fine china and rich silverware.
It is an insult to God to say sorry my Lord but on your birthday I am going to were a drab and poorly made vestment while leaving a well crafted one hanging in the wardrobe.
Sell them off you may well say. OK to whom would you entrust these garments blessed by years of pious and devout worship, a protestant minister, a theatre company that they may be tossed aside with the rest of their profane regalia.
The vestments can far from focusing ones attention on the priest transcend one to a heavenly banquet where the person of the priest is transformed into an image of the King he is there to represent. Our Idea of Kingship has changed over the years and many have discarded the loyalty once owed to an earthly sovereign and entrusted our fate to the care of those who seek power through the ballet box, so be it. When I vest I do so in the knowledge that I am putting away my personality and assuming the persona of Christ, perhaps I should were a simple loin cloth or perhaps I can put on the raiment of the triumphant King whom we meet in the celebration of our redemption. The king in his glory, where we cry glory and hosanna to our Redeeming Lord.


Quote:
 
7
Behold, he is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. All the peoples of the earth will lament him. Yes. Amen.
8
"I am the Alpha and the Omega," 6 says the Lord God, "the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty."
9
7 I, John, your brother, who share with you the distress, the kingdom, and the endurance we have in Jesus, found myself on the island called Patmos 8 because I proclaimed God's word and gave testimony to Jesus.
10
I was caught up in spirit on the Lord's day 9 and heard behind me a voice as loud as a trumpet,
11
which said, "Write on a scroll 10 what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea."
12
11 Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and when I turned, I saw seven gold lampstands
13
and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, 12 wearing an ankle-length robe, with a gold sash around his chest.
14
The hair of his head was as white as white wool or as snow, 13 and his eyes were like a fiery flame.
15
His feet were like polished brass refined in a furnace, 14 and his voice was like the sound of rushing water.
16
In his right hand he held seven stars. 15 A sharp two-edged sword came out of his mouth, and his face shone like the sun at its brightest.
17
When I caught sight of him, I fell down at his feet as though dead. 16 He touched me with his right hand and said, "Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last,
18
the one who lives. Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. I hold the keys to death and the netherworld. 17
19
Write down, therefore, what you have seen, and what is happening, and what will happen afterwards. 18
20
This is the secret meaning 19 of the seven stars you saw in my right hand, and of the seven gold lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. Revelation Chapter 1
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mairtin
Member Avatar

Rose of York
Saturday, 12. February 2011, 21:09
My meals get interrupted. I cannot ever plan one day ahead. There is a man here, a few feet away from me, who might be fit to drive next week, or might be totally dependent upon me.
Yes, Rose, I know only too well first hand the unrelenting demands that come with being a carer but I think there are some differences. You and I both have those demands mainly within our homes, we don't have to get out of bed on a winter's night to go to a car crash, or to a home where somebody has just died or is about to die. And yes, I know there are other people who have to do that but I don't know too many that are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (okay, maybe 6 days a week nowadays) or who have to immerse themselves in the full spectrum of human suffering and pain the way a priest does.

Quote:
 
Priests and religious are not the only ones who give up their whole lives to Christ. We who are married stood before the altar of God and made vows, to love and to cherish, whatever life throws at the couple.

When we enter into Catholic married life, we commit ourselves to living our lives in the spirit of Christ, we do not commit ourselves to giving our WHOLE life to Christ in the way that a priest or other religious does. Going back to the story of the rich young man, there is no suggestion that he was leading a bad life, on the contrary, there is every indication that he was leading a good life, probably roughly on a par with most of us here. The problem was that the young man wanted to move on from a life that was "okay" to the next stage but he baulked at the price he had to pay. Very few of us here have paid that price to move to the next stage, priests and religious have. That's what makes them special in my mind at least.

Quote:
 
That means if one develops a serious long term physical or mental illness the spouse is committed to caring for that person, for life even if the problem is paralysis, brain damage or paranoid schizophrenia.

Those are things that come to us in life unsought, we accept them as God's will for us and try to cope with them as best we can but we did not go looking for them; the day a priest is ordained, he commits himself to a life where discomfort and sharing the whole community's people's pain and suffering are a standard part of the job from day one.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mairtin
Member Avatar

Gerard
Saturday, 12. February 2011, 21:26
Yes, I'd buy that one Rose.
Uniform on duty - but not ostentatious.

Gerry
So when is a priest NOT on duty?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Anne-Marie

Penfold2
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 10:14
since Vat II parish liturgy has degenerated to being utilitarian and drab, we have lost much of the richness that once excited, not distracted, us in our prayer. When the words, music, incense and vestments all added to the prayer that proclaimed the glory of God.
Strange that.
I was always under the silly impression that the glory of God was portrayed directly in His act of Redemtion: dying painfully on the Cross, stripped of the dignity of His clothes.
Someone once told me it is that act of Redemption by dying that the Holy Mass was supposed to recall - guess that all changed with Vatican 2.

Posh vestments and glorious singing may be nice - but frankly they are an utter irrelevance to the reality of our Salvation.
Anne-Marie
FIAT VOLUNTAS DEI
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Gerard

Mairtin
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 10:52
Gerard
Saturday, 12. February 2011, 21:26
Yes, I'd buy that one Rose.
Uniform on duty - but not ostentatious.

Gerry
So when is a priest NOT on duty?
When is a doctor or nurse not on duty Mairtin?

Gerry
"The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998).
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mairtin
Member Avatar

Gerard
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 12:19
Quote:
 
So when is a priest NOT on duty?
When is a doctor or nurse not on duty Mairtin?
Every doctor and nurse I know works specific shifts, generally a 35 to 40 hour week. Yes, they can be called on outside those hours in an emeregency, or if they come upon an accident they will obviously help out but those incidents are highly unusual, not part of their everday life.

If I take sick today (Sunday) and call for medical assistance, I don't ring my own GP or even his practice, I ring a regional out of hours medical service, and I get whatever doctor happens to be working that shift. If I need a priest, I ring the parochial house and my own priest will respond no matter what time of day or night it is.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Rose of York
Member Avatar
Administrator
Penfold2
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 10:14
It is an insult to God to say sorry my Lord but on your birthday I am going to were a drab and poorly made vestment while leaving a well crafted one hanging in the wardrobe.
Sell them off you may well say. OK to whom would you entrust these garments blessed by years of pious and devout worship, a protestant minister, a theatre company that they may be tossed aside with the rest of their profane regalia.
I hope I did not suggest selling off fine vestments, in fact I was none too pleased to see them advertised second hand on e-bay. Neither do I want priests to offer Mass in drab and poorly made vestments. As I have already said, moderation in all things. I would prefer to see money spent on helping parishes that have vestments in dire need or restoration or replacement, than on an exotic new bejewelled mitre for a new bishop, if there is already a mitre available, in good condition.
Keep the Faith!

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Penfold
Member Avatar

Rose of York
Sunday, 13. February 2011, 18:55
I would prefer to see money spent on helping parishes that have vestments in dire need or restoration or replacement, than on an exotic new bejewelled mitre for a new bishop, if there is already a mitre available, in good condition.
On that I agree.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Derekap
Member Avatar

Some years ago I saw a photo of two Catholic priests of then about a hundred years ago. I can't remember the details but I know they wore some kind of top hat, a frock coat and gaiters. Today they would look ludricous.

In normal cirumstances I think the priests should wear a dark suit with an apparent dog collar. However, when on holiday they could wear civies. When on a cruise once, it was some days before I connected the priest at dinner with the man I saw, playing table tennis during the day wearing a khaki shirt and shorts.
Derekap
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · General Catholic Discussion · Next Topic »
Add Reply