The Habit
As Oratorians are secular clergy, they wear roughly the same dress as parish priests. However, the black cassock is fastened with a set of buttons curved from the top to the righthand side. In addition there is a distinctive Oratorian clerical collar which may be worn: white cloth that folds over the collar all around the neck, with a number of folds in, indicating from which particular Oratory a priest originates. The cassock is bound by a sash, called a fascia. The habit is given at formal reception into the community which comes after a few months of living together to see if the candidate fits in well. Members often, but do not necessarily, wear the cassock whilst engaged in their respective ministries, as this may be deemed unsuitable. On such occasions, members of the Oratory would wear the normal street clothes of a cleric, i.e., dark suit, but with the Oratorian collar. In some countries (such as Spain) the distinctive Oratorian cassock and collar was never adopted and there is no way to tell Oratorians from other secular priests.
Read more about this topic: Oratory Of Saint Philip Neri
Famous quotes containing the word habit:
“It may be that through habit these do best,
Coming to water clumsily undressed
Yearly; teaching their children by a sort
Of clowning; helping the old, too, as they ought.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept a man’s tongue oiled without any expense; and that, as that useful member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of handsome speeches and eulogistic expressions”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)