FRANCE, March 22, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The French dioceses of Perpignan, Montpellier, and Nimes edited a priest’s cassock out of a fundraising poster, making it appear he was wearing jeans instead of the traditional priestly garb.
The poster was a still shot of a promotional video. In that video, the priest is clearly wearing a cassock as he walks around a church and then takes a selfie with youth.
On the edited poster, the buttons on the priest’s cassock have been blurred so it looks like he’s merely wearing a clerical shirt and Roman collar, and jeans have been photoshopped onto his lower half. The poster conveniently has a text box over the priest’s waist, making the transition from his cassock to fake jeans less noticeable.
The French blog Le Salon Beige first picked up on this distortion of the priest’s attire on March 19, 2018 – just days after the Vatican “Lettergate” scandal. The Vatican admitted to doctoring a letter they released from Pope Benedict XVI on the theology of Pope Francis, and then later admitted to leaving out a key paragraph.
The letter from Pope Benedict indicated he hadn’t actually read the books about Pope Francis’ theology, and the retired pontiff expressed concern over one of the heterodox authors in the series of books. The Vatican had tried to hide these admissions from Pope Benedict.
Msgr. Dario Viganò, prefect of the Secretariat for Communications (essentially the Vatican communications director), resigned over this scandal, though he remains at the Secretariat.
The French diocese of Carcassonne used the same image from the video on their promotional poster, but didn’t edit out the priest’s cassock.
The cassock “was once the most common form of clerical attire in the parish setting, but beginning in the late 1960s it was almost universally abandoned,” Monsignor Charles Pope wrote. This priestly garb has become more popular with the younger generation of priests. “To me the cassock is both distinctive and eminently priestly. No one else wears anything like it, save students at graduation or the occasional judge. Thus, the cassock speaks to the ancient and set-apart quality of the priest. A priest’s attire should stand out rather than blend in. He is different –yes, ‘odd’ – and represents something not only ancient but so new as to be eternal.”
“People often thank me for wearing the cassock, but I have never had anyone thank me for wearing my suit,” he explained. “This tells me that the cassock means something special to God’s people.”
“The priest in cassock is a living sermon,” wrote Church and liturgy commentator Brian Williams on his Liturgy Guy blog. “While many bishops and brother priests today view the cassock, the biretta, or the Saturno as being rigid, nostalgic, or prideful, nothing could be further from the truth. The faithful are drawn to this visual expression of the sacramental priesthood. When we see priests in cassocks, we see our faith. We see a Catholicism, bold and unafraid to share the Gospel truth.”