1) Do you think (a) Episcopal and (b) Anglican clergy are under an obligation to say the Daily Office?
2) What is the origin of putting a little cross after the name of priests and before the name of bishops?
3) What is the origin of the clerical collar?
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7 comments:
Clerical collar was a result of early Christian slaves in Rome,during the persecution of the Church. Later, after the Constantine pax, the Christian ministers took the slave collar symbal to openly state that they were no longer slaves of Rome but slaves of Jesus Christ! Ministers adopted this slave collar over many centuries.
Timotheus
1. Church of England priests are - don't know about the States or anywhere else in the Anglican Communion. Somebody told me Episcopal priests aren't.
2. I don't know but AFAIK the traditional Western Catholic usage in writing is cross-bishop's first name-name of his see preferably in Latin and sometimes abbreviated (+Richard Londiniensis). (And two crosses for an archbishop - ++Rowan Cantuar?) Priests writing their first names with a cross afterwards seems a modern Western custom (like pectoral crosses for priests? because somebody thought it looked high-church?) and one that's spread over several churchmanships.
3. I once heard it was from taking the old high, stiff Victorian men's collars and wearing them backwards to form part of the clerical street uniform with a suit, and that Anglican clergy invented it. Hence the 'dog collar' all the way round the neck that's still identified with Anglicans. Don't know where the 'notch' collar identified with RCs came from... wearing the collar under a cassock?
I identify a very wide notch in front with Anglican clergy - I don't see anybody else doing that.
Then there's the modern tab-collar clergy shirt, which I admit makes more sense than the 'stock' getup (really a dickie!) one wears with a suit and an old-fashioned collar.
Like mediæval Western Catholic clergy, Eastern-rite clergy traditionally don't wear the collar except in some Western countries where they've adopted the clerical suit as street clothes.
I know Bishop Iker requires all postulants for holy orders to pray the Daily Office (it was stipulated in my letter admitting me to postulancy). As I was never told I could stop after ordination, I have considered that order to still be in effect! ;-) (All the clergy in Fort Worth I know of treat saying the office as an obligation, though we do not have an official policy on it in our diocesan customary.)
I have to disagree with Timotheus.
James Noonan's "The Church Visible" states that the clerical collar began as a fifteenth-century adoption, by the clergy, of the fashionable practice of turning a linen collar up and over one's outer garment. This clerical collar become distinct when the clergy kept doing it after it was no longer fashionable. Different regions developed different over-turned linen collars, with the French using lace tabs or the English originally using a collar that looked like today's ascot tie. The very simple linen band all the way around the collar, the "Roman Collar," was mandated by Rome following the Counter-Reformation.
This linen collar was commonly inserted into a black cloth colloar in the early decades of the twentieth century, before the World Wars--though it became almost universal following the Wars.
Drew of the Holy Whapping
I've heard the latter to explanations for the collars most often, but Timotheus' story only a couple of times. And I couldn't cite any scholarly sources, either. Has anybody heard of the "seminarian's collar," which is a normal clerical collar, but with a black stripe down the center front of it? I had a friend at Seabury-Western use it, and I think he decided it was really silly...
All priests should pray the Office daily. And wear cassocks.
Those interested in the origin of clerical collars will find a lot about it at the following address:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=603180
At one time, non-ordained members of the Anglican Order of the Holy Cross wore the Roman collar with a black mark in front to signify their status, or lack of it.
Later, the Order decided to remove the requirement from the lay brothers to wear that collar, and latterly, to dispense with it altogether.
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