The Priest Wears Prada

Pope Francis’s "fashion statement" about priestly garments is another blow to Catholic traditionalists. His call for simplicity seems like one more insult from the reformist Holy See.

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Pope Francis, who has offended some conservative Catholics by imposing restrictions on the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass and moving against some of his clerical critics for some time, has given them another cause for grievance. He’s made pointed barbs at some young priests for their exquisite vestments and other clerical attire. The pope’s caustic critique is more than a fashion statement; it has theological implications for a divided church in which the relative roles of priest and parishioner are increasingly contested.

In remarks in October, Francis repeated his critique of “clericalism,” by which he means undue domination of the church by an arrogant priestly elite. He said that clericalism leads to a vision of the church as a “supermarket of salvation, and priests mere employees of a multinational company. This is the great defeat to which clericalism leads us with great sorrow and scandal.”

Then came the pontiff’s parenthetical dig at priestly fashionistas. “It is enough,” the pope lamented, “to go into the ecclesiastical tailor shops in Rome to see the scandal of young priests trying on cassocks and hats, or albs and lace robes.”

The pope’s putdown of fancy vestments and the priests who love them must be viewed in the context of a papacy that continually disappoints, if not angers, church conservatives. Although he hasn’t moved to alter church teaching on abortion or the exclusion of women from the priesthood, the pope has exhibited a more pastoral approach to divorced and remarried Catholics as well as gay and transgender Catholics. Recently, the pope approved a document saying that transgender people can be baptized. In November, Francis angered conservative Catholics by removing Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, a conservative critic of the pope, and the pope has reportedly deprived another critic, Cardinal Raymond Burke, a former archbishop of St. Louis, of a subsidized Vatican apartment and salary. (A spokesman for Burke said that the cardinal hadn’t received an eviction notice, according to The New York Times.) In 2014, Francis removed Burke from an important Vatican position.

The pope’s recent comments about clerical attire weren’t the first time he has chided some priests’ fondness for fancy robes. Last year, Francis complained about priests who celebrated Mass wearing vestments trimmed in lace.

“Yes, sometimes bringing some of Grandma’s lace goes, but sometimes,” Francis said, in remarks that, if made by someone else, might be described as catty. “It’s to pay homage to Grandma, right? It’s good to pay homage to Grandma, but it’s better to celebrate the mother, the holy mother Church, and to do so how Mother Church wants to be celebrated.”

In decrying some priests’ attachment to fancy vestments, Francis does and doesn’t have history on his side. Although in the early church, the clergy wore ordinary clothes—clerical vestments are descended from “civilian” garments of the Roman Empire—over the centuries, clergy were distinguished from lay worshippers by the clothes they wore. In a sense, clothes made the man of God. That may explain why Francis seems to see a connection between clericalism and the sartorial preferences of some priests. But it also illuminates why traditionalist Catholics would see vestments, the more resplendent, the better, as a symbol of the priest’s special and sublime status, especially as the celebrant of the Mass. (Traditionalist Catholics tend to see the Mass as something performed by the priest; more progressive Catholics see the priest presiding over a communal rite.)

Francis can cite Vatican II as a warrant for his preference for less ostentatious vestments. The council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1963, advised that bishops in fostering sacred art “should strive after noble beauty rather than mere sumptuous display. This principle is to apply also in the matter of sacred vestments and ornaments.” The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, a manual for celebrating the Mass, similarly says: “It is fitting that the beauty and nobility of each vestment not be sought in an abundance of overlaid ornamentation, but rather in the material used and in the design.”

With some justice, traditionalists can argue that—as with post-Vatican II Masses in the vernacular—the simplification of vestments has dispelled some of the mystery of Catholic worship. Just as mesmerizing Gregorian Chants have given way in some parishes to treacly folk hymns, elaborately embroidered priestly vestments have been replaced in some sanctuaries by hideous pop-art chasubles (the poncho-like garments worn at Mass by some priests) and stoles.

In theory, one could favor traditional vestments without questioning Francis’s positions on other matters. But there often seems to be an overlap between theological and sartorial conservatism. For example, Burke is known for his sumptuous traditional vestments, as a cursory Google Images search will confirm.

Francis’ criticism of the fashion choices of fastidious young priests isn’t just a matter of aesthetics. It also involves the doctrine of the structure and governance of the church as well as Francis’s conception of the church’s mission. The pope has not only spoken against “clericalism,” but he has also acted to include lay Catholics in church affairs. Lay people, including women, were given a voting role in the recent proceedings of the Synod of Bishops.

To his credit, Francis practices what he preaches regarding ecclesiastical attire. Unlike his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who revived the use of the elaborate vestments favored by pre-Vatican II pontiffs (and who was known for his red shoes), Francis generally opts for understated robes. His favorite miter—the double-peaked hat worn by Catholic and some Anglican bishops—is an ascetic model without the jewels with which papal miters used to be adorned. New popes are no longer crowned with a tiara, a ritual Pope John Paul I dispensed with at the beginning of his brief reign in 1978 and one his successors haven’t revived.

Another theme of Francis’s papacy has been the need for the church to display “apostolic zeal” in proclaiming the gospel. What does that temptation have to do with a fondness for traditional priestly garments? In an interview with America, the Jesuit publication, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Holy See’s representative to the United States, said: “We are in the church at a change of epoch. People don’t understand it. And this may be the reason why most of the young priests today dream about wearing the cassock and celebrating Mass in the traditional way.” It’s easy to see why some of those priests might resent the suggestion that their attachment to traditional rites and robes reflects an inability to keep up with the times.

Francis’s disparagement of priests fond of “lace” recalls Protestant polemics against the “rags of popery” and intimations that there was something decadent, if not effeminate, about priests adorned in ecclesiastical finery. In the 19^th century, when some priests of the Church of England began to revive the use of vestments and other accouterments of Catholic worship, they were assailed as “un-English and unmanly,” the title of a 1982 article by the historian David Hilliard. Hilliard noted that in 1865, the satirical magazine Punch wrote (in a piece titled “Parsons in Petticoats” (!) that those so-called High Church clergymen “are very fond of dressing like ladies.”

It would be unfair to accuse the pope of engaging in even veiled accusations that priests with a taste for fine vestments are effeminate, even if he might consider them affected and self-important. (In another part of his broadside in October against clericalism, the Argentine pope denounced clerics who displayed “machismo and dictatorial attitudes.”) But it’s understandable that traditionalist Catholics with a historical memory of slurs against “men in dresses” might see the pope’s distaste for finery as an uncomfortable echo of such attitudes. Given that Francis has grander objectives for the church that also offend traditionalists, maybe it would be wise for him to give the fashion criticism a rest.

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