Roman Collar

One of the great aspects of returning to school after having spent a year in my own diocese is the chance to catch up with my old classmates. While it really has been a treat to be with them again, it has been a little odd for me to see them in their relatively newly acquired Roman Collars. What is more odd, though, is to see them without the collar.

From time to time, when classes are over for the day,guests have gone home, everyone is doing their homework, the deacons do remove their clerical garb and replace it with something more comfortable. I use these opportunities to mercilessly harangue them, reminding them that the people of God, myself included, deserve the witness that clerics provide when they wear their collars into the world.

While this teasing is done as a joke, there is a seriousness to my comments. We do deserve for our leaders to wear their collars. While historically the collar was common to others besides clerics and while the clerical garb as a whole was meant to serve as a symbol of the priest's simplicity of life, I think the meaning is more profound today. In a world that doubts God's existence, that demands empirical proof for everything, and that is convinced that the things of our existence are not inherently meaningful, the Roman Collar serves as a powerful voice of opposition. It says that God exists, and that it matters that He exists.

I know that the collar can be uncomfortable, hot, scratchy, and a variety of other unpleasant things (like a yoke perhaps?), but to you deacons and priests who wear them daily, regardless of where you are, thank you.