Do Anglicans Dress Like Roman Catholics?

It may surprise you to learn that, for most of their history, Anglican ministers did not dress like Roman Catholic priests, and they were not called “Father.” The fashion of Anglican clergy wearing Roman-style robes and using that title is fairly recent. It mostly began in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After all, we are not Roman Catholics. Anglicanism has its own history, its own beliefs, and its own way of dressing its ministers.

For about four hundred years, Anglican ministers were simply called “Mr.” followed by their name or office: “Mr. Jones, our Vicar,” or “Mr. Smith, our Rector.” As anyone who knows British literature will remember, Jane Austen’s Mr. Collins was never “Father Collins,” because he was Anglican, while G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown was called “Father” because he was Roman Catholic.

So the short answer to our question is no. But why does it matter what a minister wears? The answer is that clothes teach.

Clothes Teach: Vestments as a Visual Catechism

A catechism is a tool for teaching the faith. Most catechisms use words. But clothing teaches too, without saying a word. A police uniform tells you someone has the authority to enforce the law. A judge’s robe tells you that person decides cases in court. A soldier’s uniform tells you which country he serves. We understand these signals before anyone speaks. As Shakespeare observed, “The apparel oft proclaims the man.”

The same is true in church. What a minister wears is a kind of visual catechism. Every Sunday it quietly teaches the congregation what a minister is and what happens in worship. The Rev. Richard Lepage, a former Archdeacon in CANA West and now a rector in the Diocese of the Rocky Mountains (ACNA), puts it simply: “Vestments function as visible theology” (Lepage, p. 259). They tell people what a church believes before a single word is preached.

The Roman Catholic Church agrees that robes teach. The Council of Trent (1562) said that Rome uses ceremonies, lights, incense, and vestments so that “the majesty of so great a sacrifice might be recommended” and worshipers would be stirred to think about “this sacrifice” (Council of Trent, Session XXII, ch. 5, quoted in Lepage, p. 250). In other words, Rome’s Mass vestments were designed to teach that the Mass is a sacrifice.

So the real question is not “Are these robes beautiful?” The real question is “What do these robes teach?”

What Anglican Choir Dress Teaches

The traditional dress of Anglican ministers is called choir dress. It has four main parts, and each one began as something practical:

• The black cassock (or the black academic or Geneva gown worn by preachers like George Whitefield and John Newton) was the everyday clothing of clergy and scholars. Black was cheap, lasted a long time, did not show dirt or ink stains, and fit the serious life expected of ministers and scholars.

• The white surplice is a loose white linen garment. In the Middle Ages it was worn over ordinary clothes to keep them clean in church. It was simple and washable, and it was not tied to the idea of the Mass as a sacrifice. That is why the Church of England kept it.

• The black scarf, or tippet, probably began as a warm scarf or hood to protect the throats of those who spoke or taught in cold buildings. Over time it became the sign of a preacher and teacher.

• The academic hood comes from the universities. It shows the minister’s education and reminds everyone that he is a trained teacher of the Bible.

Put together, choir dress teaches a clear lesson. The minister is a preacher, teacher, and pastor. In the New Testament he is a presbyteros, which means an elder. He is not a sacrificing priest who offers Christ on an altar. Interestingly, the English word “priest” itself comes from presbyteros: Greek presbyteros (elder) → Latin presbyter → Old English preost → Middle English prest → Modern English priest. Over time, though, the word became confused with a different idea, the Latin sacerdos, “one who offers sacrifice.” The Anglican formularies reject that idea of the ministry.

The Rev. Adam Charles Young, an ordained Church of England priest, former British Army padre, and long-term OMF missionary in Japan, points out that the Reformers deliberately dressed ministers in academic clothing because their main job was to teach and preach. Today, he notes, the hood and academic cap still make people think of learning and teaching, just as they do at a graduation (Young, “A Little Faithfulness”).

What Roman Mass Vestments Teach

Roman Catholic Mass vestments include the chasuble (a large, often colorful outer garment), the alb (a long white robe worn underneath it), and the stole (a long band worn around the neck). Over the centuries these garments became closely tied to the Roman teaching that the Mass is a sacrifice offered by a priest at an altar for the living and the dead.

The English Reformers rejected that teaching. The Thirty-Nine Articles say that Christ’s offering on the cross was complete and that the “sacrifices of Masses” were “blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits” (Article

XXXI

). They also say that the Lord’s Supper was not meant to be “lifted up, or worshipped” (Article XXVIII ). Because the Mass vestments taught the very doctrine the Articles rejected, the Church of England put them away.

Even Rome noticed what the Reformers had done. In 1896 Pope Leo XIII complained that in the Anglican Ordinal every trace of the sacrifice and the sacrificing priesthood “was deliberately removed and struck out” (Apostolicae Curae, §30, quoted in Lepage, p. 249). Rome and the Reformers disagreed about whether this was good, but they agreed about what had happened: the Church of England had changed its forms of worship, and its ministers’ dress, in order to teach a different theology.

What the Church of England Actually Required

Some people say Anglicans have always been free to wear whatever they like. History says otherwise.

• 1549. Cranmer’s first Prayer Book was a careful first step. It still allowed the old Mass vestments at Communion.

• 1552. The second Prayer Book, fully reformed, required the surplice for all services. There were no longer special vestments for the Lord’s Supper (Young; Neil and Willoughby, The Tutorial Prayer Book, p. 86).

• 1559. Under Queen Elizabeth I, royal officials went through the country and collected the old “copes, vestments, albs, or other ornaments of superstition” from the parishes (Neil and Willoughby, pp. 85, 88).

• 1566. The Advertisements ordered the surplice and hood for all services, with a cope (a plain cloak) allowed in cathedrals for Communion (Neil and Willoughby, p. 86).

• 1604. Canon 58 required every minister to “wear a decent and comely Surplice with sleeves,” with a hood for university graduates and a black tippet for others.

• 1662. The bishops who revised the Prayer Book required the surplice, not the 1549 vestments, in their own visitations of their dioceses (Neil and Willoughby, p. 85).

• 1838. When one young clergyman tried to wear what Bishop Bagot of Oxford called a “forgotten portion of the ancient Clerical dress,” the bishop called it an “injudicious attempt” and noted that it had been “speedily abandoned” (Bricknell, p. 616). Notice the word forgotten: after nearly three hundred years, the old Mass vestments had disappeared from Anglican memory.

• 1871–1878. When nineteenth-century Ritualists tried to bring Roman vestments back, the highest church courts ruled against them in the Purchas Judgment (1871), the Ridsdale case (1877), and the Folkestone case (1878). The courts held that the surplice was the lawful dress of Anglican ministers (Neil and Willoughby, pp. 86–87).

Roman vestments remained unlawful in the Church of England until its canons were revised in the 1960s, though the law was widely ignored from about 1900 onward (Young). In America, too, Episcopal worship around 1900 still looked very different from the Roman-style worship that later became common (Lepage, p. 240, n. 4).

These were not small arguments over taste. Historian Rebecca Hicks shows that the Elizabethan quarrel over vestments was “anything but a ‘thing indifferent’”; it split churches and helped fuel wider conflict (Hicks, p. 17). People fought over these garments precisely because everyone understood that they taught something. The Reformers changed the robes because robes teach doctrine. The Ritualists wanted the Roman robes back for the same reason (Lepage, p. 246).

The archbishops of the nineteenth century saw clearly what was happening. Archbishop Charles Longley of Canterbury wrote:

“I now find it impossible to evade the conviction that among those who are joining in the present movement for the restoration of Eucharistic vestments, the use of incense and candles in the day time, the offering of the Holy Sacrament as a propitiatory sacrifice, and the elevation of the consecrated elements for the worship of the people, there are many who are resolved, if possible, to obliterate in the formularies and worship of our Church every trace of the Reformation.”

Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury

In 1866 Longley added that these innovations were felt to be “but a mimicry of the Church of Rome,” involving in some cases “the adoption of her erroneous teaching” (quoted in Young). Bishop Archibald Tait of London had already warned in 1859 against a minister’s “childish mimicry of antiquated garments,” dressing himself up “that he may resemble as much as possible a Roman Catholic priest” (quoted in Young). In 1872 Bishop William Connor Magee described the movement as “a close and even a servile imitation of all the minutest details of Roman Catholic ceremonials,” as if its aim were for its clergy to be “as like Romish priests as possible, and their greatest happiness to be mistaken for such” (quoted in Lepage, p. 254).

“The use of strange [Roman Catholic] vestments and ceremonies, which neither we nor our fathers have seen, has often been spoken of as childishness and frivolity. I have never been able to regard it from its ridiculous side. I believe it has gone along with a deliberate intention to alter the doctrinal position of the Church of England, but introducing into our services, ornaments, vessels, and gestures, which are not prescribed in our order of Common Prayer…”

William Thomson, Archbishop of York

Why It Matters Today: Being Honest About Who We Are

In the late twentieth century, many North American Episcopal and Anglican clergy set aside traditional choir dress and began wearing Roman Mass vestments. Sometimes this came from simply not knowing Anglican history. Sometimes it was a deliberate attempt to blur or reject Anglicanism’s Protestant identity without honestly leaving for Rome. Either way, the robes still teach what they have always taught. A minister may privately say he does not believe the Roman doctrine of the Mass, but the chasuble on his back still says it for him (Lepage, pp. 246–47).

Think of it this way. A fan of one football team does not wear the jersey of its rival. Both teams play the same game, but they are not on the same team (Young). Or think of a uniform you have not earned. Wearing a military uniform or medals you never earned is called “stolen valor,” and people rightly see it as deceptive. Lepage points out why the comparison fits. A Roman Catholic priest’s vestments belong to a life bound by vows: celibacy, obedience to his bishop, and, in religious orders, poverty and stability. An Anglican minister who wears those vestments, without belonging to that church, sharing its beliefs, or making those lifelong commitments, borrows the honor and respect attached to an office he has not entered. At best he looks like a historical reenactor dressing up as something he is not (Lepage, p. 248). Movies and television use Roman vestments as an instant sign of a Catholic priest for a reason: everyone knows what they mean (Lepage, p. 248).

It is also striking that this borrowing goes only one way. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox clergy do not borrow the choir dress of Anglican ministers or the black gown of Presbyterian preachers. Only Anglicans seem tempted to dress as ministers of a church whose teaching their own church rejects (Lepage, p. 253). The same is true of the title “Father.” As late as 1947, an Episcopal writer could quote a Roman Catholic priest joking, “Don’t call me Father; do you take me for an Anglican?” The joke only worked because Anglo-Catholic clergy had recently started borrowing Rome’s title (Lepage, p. 258).

Underneath all of this is a question of identity. Lepage explains that historic, formulary-based Anglicanism has an inherited identity: each generation receives the faith, worship, and practice of those before it and hands them on faithfully. The newer approach treats Anglicanism as a constructed identity, something to redesign according to taste. As he puts it, an inherited identity asks, “What have we received?” while a constructed identity asks, “What do we wish to become?” (Lepage, p. 251). Choir dress belongs to the first approach. It is what Anglicans have actually received.

Is what a minister wears the most important issue facing the church? No. But Jesus said, “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10). As Adam Young observes, faithfulness in small things is a sign of faithfulness in greater ones, and compromise in small things often signals compromise in greater ones (Young).

Bishop J. C. Ryle, the first Bishop of Liverpool, put the matter plainly:

“There are many [Anglican] churches at this moment, in which divine service is carried on with such an amount of gaudy dressing, candle-lighting, and theatrical ceremonial, that it defeats the very purpose of worship… Neither in the Gospels nor in the epistles shall we find the slightest warrant for a gorgeous and decorated ceremonial… Whether men like it or not, what the heart of man needs teaching, is the uselessness of outward ornaments without inward grace. Let us beware, above all things, of any worship in which the ministers wear the dress, or act in the manner, of sacrificing priests.”

Bp. John Charles Ryle (1816–1900), the first Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, ‘Worship’ in Knots Untied, pp. 325–326

What About the Clerical Collar?

The familiar black suit with a white collar has a related but different history. It began among Scottish Presbyterians, who also saw the minister as a preacher and pastor rather than a sacrificing priest. The simple black coat and white collar became a common sign of Protestant ministers in Europe and America. Only later, when many Roman Catholics immigrated to the mostly Protestant United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, did Roman Catholic priests adopt this style, partly to blend in outside of church. So even though most American evangelical ministers stopped wearing it around the 1950s and 1960s, the clerical collar is historically a Protestant garment. Like choir dress, it points to the Word of God and an educated pastoral ministry, not to an altar and a sacrifice.

In Sum

Anglican choir dress, understood in its history and meaning, is not a compromise. It is a statement of faith. It visibly teaches the Church of England’s Protestant and Reformed doctrine, its continuity with the ancient Church rightly understood, and its rejection of vestments and practices that hide the finished work of Christ on the cross. When our ministers wear the cassock, surplice, scarf, and hood, they are not playing dress-up. They are showing us, every Sunday, who we are: a church that receives Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice by faith and is fed by the preaching of his Word.

Works Cited

• Bricknell, W. Simcox. The Judgment of the Bishops upon Tractarian Theology. Oxford: J. Vincent, 1845.

• Canons of the Church of England (1604), Canon 58.

• Hicks, Rebecca. “‘Popish Pageauntes’: The Transnaturing and Proclamatory Powers of Vestments in the Elizabethan Vestments Controversy and Beyond.” Constellations 14, no. 1 (2023).

• Lepage, Richard, II. “From Choir Dress to Chasubles: A Semiotics of Anglican Vesture and the Challenge of Anglican Identity.” The Global Anglican 140, no. 3 (September 2026): 239–262.

• Neil, Charles, and J. M. Willoughby, eds.

  The Tutorial Prayer Book for the Teacher, the Student, and the General Reader.

  London: Harrison Trust, 1912; rev. 1913.

• Ryle, J. C. “Worship.” In Knots Untied. London, 1874.

• Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, 1.3.

• The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571), Articles XXVIII and XXXI.

• Young, Adam Charles. “A Little Faithfulness: Anglican Robes and Heritage.” Once Again I Thank You (blog), April 21, 2017.