May 19 Feast Day of
Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988
I have to admit, I am old school. Very seldom do I go forth into the world without wearing my clerical collar. After 55 years, it is a habit. I’m not trying to prove anything or trying to be “holier than thou;” however, there are times when I don’t wear one.
If it is a very informal dinner or something of that nature, I might not wear the collar. There are those times when people get rattled, confused or resentful when they realize a member of the Clergy is present without a collar in “their world” in plain clothes. “Collaring the priest” is rather like “belling the cat,” so the birds will hear it coming. Clerical collars warn the unsuspecting of a possible intrusion of Christianity in the spheres of life they prefer to keep separate from the Church.
Dunstan believed that such separations are false, even contrary to God’s reality. There is no place in this world where God is not or should not be. For him, politics and government were as much a part of life in God as his monasticism.
Dunstan brought that conviction to everything he did, closing the gap between religion and government, between religion and the arts, and between religion and labor. He believed the work of reconciliation entrusted to us is more than bringing affections together; it is also bringing the physical world back into union with its Maker. Doing just that, nothing more nor less, is doing the work God has given each of us to do, here and now–with a collar or without.
