Religious Habit

The religious habit is not a uniform but the visible form of a set of vows, and the modern argument over whether to wear it is an argument about the work itself.

Legible by order

The habit is the distinctive dress of a religious order, and the order is readable from the colour and cut: Benedictine black, Cistercian white, Franciscan brown with a knotted cord whose three knots are the vows, Dominican white with a black cloak. It is received in stages that track the stages of commitment, so the garment marks not only which order but how far into it the wearer has gone.

After the Second Vatican Council

Vesture went through a real upheaval after the Second Vatican Council, when many congregations of women modified or set aside the habit in order to work more accessibly, while others kept it. The two positions still coexist, and a number of newer communities have deliberately returned to the full habit. The choice is a genuine argument about whether visible separation helps or hinders the work, and both sides make it in good faith rather than out of laxity or rigidity, which is how it is often uncharitably read from outside.

A habit is not put on at will. It is conferred, in stages that track a formation lasting years, and each stage adds something.

A postulant, in the first period of trial, generally wears ordinary clothes or a partial habit. Clothing or investiture admits the candidate to the novitiate and confers the habit itself, traditionally with a white veil for women to mark that the person is a novice. First profession, the taking of temporary vows, changes the veil to black in many congregations or adds an element such as a cincture, a ring or a cross. Solemn or final profession completes it. In some orders a new name is given at clothing, marking the change of identity the garment represents.

The pieces carry meanings that are stated in the rites. The tunic is the basic garment. The cincture, a leather belt or a knotted cord, refers to chastity and to service; the Franciscan cord has three knots for poverty, chastity and obedience. The scapular, hanging front and back, is called in the Rule of Saint Benedict the garment for work and came to be spoken of as the yoke of Christ. The hood or cowl belongs to the monastic choir. Dominicans wear a rosary at the belt, Carmelites brown, Cistercians white under a black scapular, Benedictines black.

Colour and cut therefore identify an order at a distance, which was the original point in a world where a traveller needed to know whose hospitality they were receiving.

Whether to wear it at all was a serious argument after the Second Vatican Council. Many active congregations of women adopted secular dress, on the ground that the habit distanced them from those they served, and others kept it for the opposite reason. Both positions are still held.