The Code of Canon Law states that “clerics must wear decorous ecclesiastical vestments” in line with the laws that bind the various bishops’ conferences. The Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) established that “the clergy has to wear a cassock or dog collar,” meaning black or grey vestments and a white dog collar.
Hmmm... dog collar? Really? That is the best we can do in "official" terminology?
After spending most of my ministry trying to stop lay folk (and too dang many Pastors) from calling them "robes" instead of vestments, now we find voices within the church calling the clerical collar the "dog collar"????
Kinda makes you want to, well, it's too early for a stiff drink...
Click here for the wiki history...
2 comments:
Ever since I read the following, I admit that when speaking informally I've called the collar, whether just tab style or complete, a flea collar:
A priest was walking along the corridor of the parochial school near the preschool wing when a group of little ones were trotting by on the way to the cafeteria. One little lad of about three or four stopped and looked at him in his clerical clothes and asked, "Why do you dress funny?"
He told him he was a priest and this is the uniform priests wear.
Then the boy pointed to the priest's plastic collar tab and asked, "Do you have an owie?"
The priest was perplexed till he realized that to him the collar tab looked like a band aid. So the priest took it out and handed it to the boy to show him. On the back of the tab are raised letters giving the name of the manufacturer.
The little guy felt the letters, and the priest asked, "Do you know what those words say?" "Yes I do," said the lad who was not old enough to read. Peering intently at the letters he said, "Kills ticks and fleas up to six months!"
That said, if I was speaking formally or officially, I would never use any common or euphemistic language to describe it.
Coming from a fundagelical background, those who called themselves "pastor" wore only what everyone else wore. Then it was a suit and tie on Sunday, and now it has become skinny jeans, tee shirts, and a soul patch on the chin. (Don't even get me started on the pastrix situation...) On the street, you couldn't tell him from everyman.
When a former minister asked to be called by his given name, many thought nothing of it and did so. No one seemed to think that disrespectful. Nevertheless, it would have been considered contemptuous to disparage his dress.
Now I have a pastor (read: Father) who wears clerical garb and vestments.
How much more insulting is it to ridicule the clothes which mark him as Christ's minister? I see making fun of those garments as making fun of Christ Himself.
Calling it a "dog collar" insults the man (he's a dog), and the Savior (implies an abusive owner).
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