vestments

A Glossary of Terms for Liturgical Vestments

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Many technical terms are used to describe the variety of vestments and textile arts used in worship. These terms are defined here.

The vestments worn at the Eucharist are derived from the dress-up clothing of the late Roman Empire, the dominant culture of the world in which Christianity first took root. The only exception is the stole, which is a sign of office.

The basic garment is the alb, which is properly worn by all ministering at the service. Some albs are intended to be worn under other vestments, are put on over an amice (which is simply a neckcloth), and girded about the waist with a rope cincture. Other albs are designed to be seen, are more tailored in appearance, and frequently require neither an amice nor a cincture.

The surplice is a medieval variant of the alb. It is appropriately used as a substitute for it by all except the priest-celebrant, the concelebrating presbyters, and the ministering deacons.

The cotta is a shortened surplice. It is also far less attractive. Its use is not recommended, even for choristers and young servers.

Priests’ stoles are worn over both shoulders, and hand straight down in front.

Deacons’ stoles may be worn in three different ways:

  1. Over the alb (and under the dalmatic), over the left shoulder, drawn across the chest and back, and fastened on the right side.
  2. Over the alb (and dalmatic), with the center under the right arm, and the ends drawn across the chest and back and over the left shoulder to fall front and back.
  3. Over the alb (and dalmatic), with the center on the left shoulder, and the ends hanging straight down front and back.

The chasuble is the distinctive vestment of bishops and priests at the Eucharist. (It is also worn at the Good Friday and Holy Saturday liturgies.) Some modern chasubles are designed to have the stole worn over them. Most chasubles are not, however, and look best when worn over the stole. Chasubles worn at celebrations facing the people should be as attractive when seen from the front as from the back.

The dalmatic is the distinctive vestment of deacons, and its use is not confined to the Eucharist. It may be worn at all celebrations or only at the more festive times and occasions.

Chasubles and dalmatics, as pointed out above, began as articles of clothing, and it is desirable that they appear to be such. Their essential beauty should derive from their cut and choice of fabric, rather than from embroidery or other ornamentation. It is not necessary that the fabrics chosen should be “ecclesiastical”; decoration that suggests “slogans” should be avoided.

A cape may be worn by bishops and presbyters at services that do not include the Eucharist.

The use of frontals to decorate the altar is very ancient. In their classic form they fall to the floor, sometimes on all four sides, sometimes only on the front and back. In the latter case, the “fair linen” that covers the top of the altar falls to the floor at the ends.

The Use of Liturgical Vestments

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Vestments, which have a long and venerable history in liturgical practice, provide many opportunities for artistry and creativity. The following article outlines guidelines for the use of vestments, taking into account both the history of their use and the differences of a variety of worship traditions.

“And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. And you shall speak to all who have the ability, whom I have endowed with an able mind, that they may make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood.” … And of the blue and purple and scarlet stuff they made finely wrought garments, for ministering in the holy place; they made the holy garments for Aaron; as the Lord had commanded Moses. (Exod. 28:2–3; 39:1, RSV)

In Exodus is seen the beginning of a long tradition that is still with the church, that is, the tradition of wearing special garments for worship. The tradition affects the laity as they dress in their “Sunday best” to attend public worship services and the clergy as they wear various types of robes and other garments to lead public worship.

History Within Christianity

As the Christian church grew, special garments were adopted by its leadership in the style common to the upper lay classes of imperial Rome (Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy [London: Dacre Press, 1945], 399). This style was the linea (a long linen robe with long, close sleeves) above which was worn a tunica (a garment that ended at about the knees and had short sleeves), and above that was the chasuble (a round piece of cloth with a hole for the head in the center) worn on formal occasions or when one was outside (Dix, p. 400). This was the common costume of the clergy, civil servants, and senators and remained so even after lay styles had changed to the more military-style invading barbarians had brought to Roman territory in the fourth century.

The first recorded appearance of special liturgical vestments was in A.D. 330 when the emperor Constantine presented such a garment as a gift to the new cathedral in Jerusalem. The vestment was a robe, probably in the style of the common linea, tunica, and chasuble, made of gold tissue to be worn by the bishop when presiding over baptism during the Easter vigil (Dix, p. 399). We see in this development that the style remained that which was common to the upper lay classes, but the material of liturgical garments was becoming quite elegant.

The first move to a special liturgical garment was the adoption of the pallium near the end of the fifth century. The French clergy had sought to adopt the pallium, a scarf of secular-office, as a special badge of ministry, but they were rebuked by Pope Celestine I in a.d. 425. Celestine said that he wanted “ … bishops distinguished by life, not robes, by the purity of heart not by elegance.… ” (Dix, p. 401). Celestine’s opinion did not prevail; by the late fifth century, the pallium was adopted by clergy of all orders as the liturgical vestment of the church.

Soon other developments in liturgical vestments became popular. The maniple, which began in Egypt and reached Rome in the sixth century, was a sort of large handkerchief or napkin worn on the left arm or carried in the left hand. The tradition of it stayed with the church until the twelfth century, when the maniple became embroidered bands on the left sleeve of many vestments (Robert Lesage, Vestments and Church Furniture [New York: Hawthorne Books, 1960], 10). The traditional tunica also developed a slightly longer form with larger sleeves and was renamed dalmatic. The dalmatic was worn without chasuble. The dalmatic was accepted in the late sixth century as the distinctive vestment of deacons in the Western church (Dix, p. 402).

By the seventh century, a special costume had been adopted as the official clerical vestment of the church. In a.d. 633, the Council of Toledo ordered the restoration of alb (another form of the ancient linea), stole, and chasuble to a priest who had been unfrocked and was being restored to orders (Dix, p. 403). This account witnesses to the official acceptance of these garments as vestments strictly for the clergy.

During the fourth and fifth centuries, the unwritten policy of the church was to celebrate the liturgy in the garments of everyday life. These garments were perhaps made of finer material and were more colorful than much of the common lay clothing but in style and manner of wearing they were essentially the same. The use of symbolical liturgical vestments, like those of the Old Testament, was strictly avoided.

By the end of the eighth-century special vestments were developed largely due to the conservatism of the clergy. While much of lay society had turned to barbarian and military fashions during the sixth and seventh centuries, the clergy retained the old “civilized” fashions of imperial Rome. These fashions were later adopted and developed into official garments of the clergy. Three points may be made concerning the early history of Christian liturgical vestments:

  1. Prior to the fourth century, the “domestic” character of worship was asserted to prevent the church from adopting special ceremonial robes as was the practice of vestment common in pagan mystery religions.
  2. There was no real intention of creating a distinction of dress between clergy and the laity at liturgy.
  3. By the Middle Ages, such a distinction had appeared accidentally because the clergy kept the old costume long after the laity had discarded it, and eventually, the idea of special clergy dress was accepted as right and desirable in itself (Dix, pp. 404, 409–410).

When the church reached this third point of acceptance, many more elaborate liturgical costumes developed that were used to display clerical rank and distinguish clergy from laity.

With the coming of the Reformation, Calvinist and Lutheran groups reacted against the elaborate vestments of the Roman church and adopted the black Geneva gown. The Geneva gown was the proper garb of the educated men of the Reformation period and became the proper garb of the new Protestant clergy. It was a sign that these were scholarly and educated men. The black gown became a symbol of the importance of a rationalistic approach to Christianity. The only ecclesiastical garment borrowed from Catholicism was the stole, as a sign that the person wearing the stole was a minister conducting worship (Joseph A. Culpepper, “Clothed for God’s Glory,” The Disciple 8:3 (Feb.1, 1981): 13–14; Albert W. Palmer, The Art of Conducting Public Worship [New York: Macmillan, 1939], 97).

Current Fashion

In many traditions and congregations, the pastor chooses to wear, or as a congregation’s norms may dictate, a plain dark business suit in which to lead worship. The tradition behind this practice stretches back into the early church tradition of wearing the daily garb of the upper classes. Certainly in the United States, a strong case can be made that the business suit meets the requirement of common, everyday clothing, which does not separate clergy from laity. It points to the fact that the gospel relates to the everyday world and that the clergyperson is one of the priesthood of all believers.

The disadvantage of this style is that there is little celebrative mood conveyed by the business suit and less of a feeling that the pastor is putting on special garments for worship as a visible act of the service of God in the office of the ministry. As more women enter the ministry, some feel we must deal with the question of what they should wear in worship, what is proper, and whether radical differences in dress styles between male and female pastors emphasize sexist tendencies. Clearly, there are better choices for liturgical vestments.

The Geneva gown is still the prevalent style in much of the Reformed tradition. It is serious in appearance and is a symbol of the importance of the acts that occur during worship.

Major objections to the continued use of the Geneva gown are that its dark colors are somber and, thus, do not lend themselves to festivity in worship. For the majority of its history, it has been used more in academia than in the church and, thus, it is more properly an academic garment than a liturgical one. The use of hoods and the addition of doctoral bars place an even stronger emphasis on the academic side of the garment. Furthermore, the Geneva gown developed as a masculine garment. By using this gown as the liturgical vestment of the Reformed tradition, women in ministry are forced to adopt a traditionally male vestment. The Geneva gown is appropriate for worship in some instances, but other styles should also be considered.

The last of the current liturgical fashions to consider is the alb. It has an ancient tradition, which dates back to the linea of the early church in imperial Rome. It is usually a simply cut white robe with a great deal of versatility. In its original form in secular Roman society, it was the garment worn by both men and women. Current styles remain appropriate for either sex. The alb has widespread use today in Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and Lutheran traditions, and there is growing use of the alb in other traditions (Culpepper, p. 14).

The basic problem with the alb is the fact that it may not be readily accepted by some congregations—but this should not deter its adoption by the church.

The Future

Dressing in special ways can truly be another manner in which we glorify God. Furthermore, the tradition of dressing in some form of liturgical vestment is an ancient one, reaching back to the Exodus stories, and one which was rediscovered and reinterpreted by Christianity.

The alb is perhaps the most appropriate liturgical garment. In style, it is less sexist than other current fashions. The white color lends itself to joy and celebration. The simplicity of the garment allows it to be quite versatile, i.e., stoles and chasubles of various designs and colors may be added designate to the seasons of the church year and various liturgical celebrations.

The alb is used in many traditions and, thus, is a symbol of the oneness of the body of Christ. The Geneva gown, on the other hand, emphasizes the division of the body of Christ by reminding us of the violent reaction during the Reformation against the practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Simplicity and modesty should be guiding principles, along with the desire to aid the congregation in celebrative worship.

The Geneva gown is still a useful garment, especially in most Reformed churches, and should be considered as an important liturgical vestment. A pastor may possess a variety of special liturgical garb to be used at various times and places.

A final word must be said about the importance and use of color in liturgical garments. When used with a keen sense of what is right and pleasing to the eye in a given situation color can be one of the greatest liturgical aids. These same basic rules apply to the choice of textured and patterned material for vestments and linings. (See E. A. Roulin, Vestments and Vesture: A Manual of Liturgical Art [Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1930], 41-53.)

We are moving into an age with the most exciting possibilities for liturgical vestments. The changes ahead will lead to more practical, more celebrative, and more versatile garments. The changes, especially in Protestant traditions, will also help ground liturgical garments in the larger history of the entire Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Significance of Liturgical Vestments

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This article discusses both theological and historical perspectives on the use of vestments in worship, referring both to vestments for worship leaders and for important objects used in worship.

In the movie Back to the Future, a young man is transported in a time machine back to the teenage years of his parents (the 1950s). When he is first discovered, his parents’ peers call him Calvin because so much of his clothing bears Calvin Klein labels. Sporting the names of famous designers on seat pockets, sleeves, and shirt pockets is a mark of status in our time. This has rarely, if ever, been so before. Within recorded history, however, clothing has always been more than a mere extension of the skin for purposes of warmth and protection.

Clothing communicated relationships and meanings within a community. Although all the Maori of New Zealand may wear cloaks made of bird feathers, the pattern of the feathers distinguishes one group from another. The contrasting patterns of Chinese and Japanese clothing reveal that the Chinese were predominantly a hunting society, while the Japanese were largely agricultural.

English kings, earls, dukes, and counts can be identified by the shape of their crowns and the number of ermine tails on their ceremonial robes. Denim jeans and flannel shirts are unacceptable attire at board meetings of Merrill Lynch, and the wearing of three-piece pinstripe suits at a gathering of Hell’s Angels could be dangerous.

Vesting the Ministers

So it is with the presence or absence of ritual vesture in communities of Christians. To proscribe all ritual vesture is to communicate a clear theological position and to raise the problem of what suit or dress is appropriate for the leader of this Sunday’s assembly. To prescribe only academic vesture for the preacher and leader of worship is to say something loud and clear about the community’s understanding of the liturgical act. Churches with “high” sacramental traditions are also taking a theological and ritual stance by continuing to use special liturgical vesture for some or all of their liturgical ministers.

Before we begin to focus on the artistic quality of liturgical vesture, we need to look at the liturgical and pastoral judgments to be made about these elements of our sacramental prayer. Music in Catholic Worship (USCC, 1972) reminds us that no artistic criterion is without its pastoral and liturgical implication. The application of words or shopworn religious signs to a chasuble, for instance, reduces this noble garment to a sandwich board and tends to reduce the liturgy itself to a medium of information rather than formation. Not only is a lightweight polyester confirmation “stole” poor art; it also gives rise to ministerial confusion, since the stole is a vestment specific to the ordained minister.

Vesting the Assembly

The use of fabrics in worship goes far beyond the obvious vesting of the presider, since to vest or not to vest an object, person, group, or action indicates the reverence we have for them. Since the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, official liturgical documents have stressed the assembly as the primary symbol in Christian worship. How is this reflected in the use of the textile arts?

How do we vest the entire space where the assembly gathers? Do we still pile hangings around the altar and the presider’s chair and on the front of the pulpit? Does an assembly have any sense that hangings give an added seasonal dimension to the entire space? Is the particular importance of ritual objects underlined by the coverings they bear? The draped cross on Good Friday, the veiled tabernacle, the lectionary covered in precious fabrics—these objects still speak to us of the glory that shines through them. In the same way, the roles of the various ministers can be more clearly symbolized if the ministers are clothed in gracious vesture.

Devotion to the Chasuble

The textile arts, like the other arts that serve the liturgy, have changed over the centuries. The ample vesture of early presiders gradually became shrunken and stiff panels, worn fore and aft. This shift from the classic conical planeta to the less significant “fiddleback” or “Roman” chasuble charts the development of ministerial roles, especially the presider’s, vis-à-vis the entire assembly’s ownership of its liturgy. The conical chasuble is admittedly a garment that does not allow for a wide range of free arm movement. The celebration of the Eucharist, however, in which each ministerial rank (including deacons, acolytes, and lectors) performed only those actions proper to its own ministry, revolved around a vision of the presider as one who did nothing but preside.

The bishop or priest prayed the orations, preached (from a seated position), and raised his arms only at the end of the entrance, offertory, and Communion processions and during the eucharistic prayer. Taking the gifts, setting the Table, and handling the vessels were all done by less encumbered ministers. When some of those ministers, the deacons, did wear chasubles, they did so in a way that changed the shape of that garment (the planeta plicata or folded chasuble). The dalmatic, a full-sleeved tunic, came to be identified with the diaconal role because the deacon could “work” better in that beautiful garment than in the fuller but more confining planeta.

Historians of liturgical vesture are accustomed to presenting charts that show a gradual process of cutting away the long sides of the chasuble in order to free the arms of the presider. As the presider assumed more of the various ministerial roles during the Eucharist, the presider’s distinctive garment, the chasuble, became smaller and smaller. The more the Eucharist was dominated by the priestly office, the smaller, stiffer, and less beautiful the chasubles became. In a sense, one could teach the history of eucharistic development—and therefore, the history of the church—by tracing the evolution of the chasuble.

Fabric Coverings

We can follow a similar route for the vesting of objects. Icons, engravings, and book illuminations abound with illustrations of pious Christians covering their hands with plain linen cloths as they handle the altar vessels. The same simple yet ample cloths often cover these same vessels. Gospel books, pastoral staffs, and vessels for holy oils are covered and carried in the same way. As these objects became minimalized, their coverings became stiff little flaps on which insignificant images were painted or embroidered. Because the objects were reduced as effective signs, and because the actions in which they were employed were no longer open and full, their coverings no longer spoke to the community. Chalices, grapes, and wheat came to be applied to the coverings of bread plates and wine cups to signal that something significant was being covered.

Enter the Banner

The vesting of the great assembly space has evolved more in our own day than in previous centuries. Though we know that magnificent tapestries have occasionally covered the walls of some churches, we have little historical information on significant vesting of worship spaces prior to the modern era.

A banner is of its nature temporary—it identifies particular groups in the entire assembly or procession, or it gives a special but temporary highlight to some person, group, object, or action during a liturgical celebration. A wall hanging, though not permanent, usually has a special place throughout a liturgical season. Banners move into a liturgy and move out; wall hangings are in place before the assembly gathers and remain in place for weeks, months, or even years.

Banners and wall hangings are used more frequently today than at any previous time. Because so many of our first efforts in liturgical renewal treated worship as a communicator of information, banners and wall hangings made their entrance in the great American tradition of the billboard. More and more, however, our assembly spaces are being graced by simple but bold statements of color and abstract design that give greater allowance for the eye’s ability to be caught more powerfully by the imagination than by theological aphorisms or slogans.

Promise for the Future

These remarks may sound like a psalm of lament. They were intended, however, to point out how truly significant vesture is as one of the elements in the ensemble of arts that makes up liturgical prayer. Now, more than ever, visual, graphics, and handicraft artists are being called on to design and execute altar coverings, banners, wall hangings, vesture, and lectionary covers worthy of our growing awareness of the power of the liturgy in which these objects are used. We have moved from the felt-and-burlap stage to hand-woven textiles, finely crafted tapestries, and freeform fiber works. Now we know that the kind of chasuble that sells in gross lots (often to bereaved families who then donate them to the parish) is not fit for any liturgical assembly (and especially not for foreign missions). For the first time, pastors and parish liturgical committees are willing to commission vesture and hangings designed for a particular space with its own unique play of light, wall finishes, and floor textures. The freeing of the Christian imagination in public prayer has opened the door to a significant revival of the textile arts in worship.

No element of life and no art is insignificant to a particular liturgical celebration. In the past two decades, we have learned to recognize music as a central element of worship and not simply as decoration. At first, we spoke of liturgy and music, then of liturgical music, and finally of musical liturgy. In the past decade, we have also taken a particularly critical look at the shape of our assembly spaces, the quality of light and acoustics, and the worthiness of liturgical furnishings. From the beginning of our liturgical reform, we have criticized the quality of translations and new texts. As we become more aware of the crucial role of language, we are beginning to enjoy freshly composed texts that voice our common prayer in a language both evocative and challenging.

We are just beginning to look at vesture and the textile arts. Perhaps we Americans are reluctant to give too much attention to something so clearly decorative as fabric, its shape, color, cut, and flow. But in fact, the nonverbal world—the colors we behold, the textures we feel and touch—beckons us across the threshold of the spirit.

The Church Building as a Setting for Liturgical Action

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The following comments discuss the relationship of the design of the worship space to the actions that take place there. The function and significance of these actions provide the needed guidelines for liturgical architecture.

The church building and setting for the liturgical assembly. Nothing more, but nothing less. Liturgical worship happens in space, and space is shaped into place by the meaning people discover within it. Jews and Christians have shaped space into place by discovering that the Creator abides throughout creation. Christians especially can never forget the spatial concreteness the Incarnation entails. God did not become a movement, a concept, an ideal, or even a committee, but a man of flesh and bone with a parentage, friends, a language, a country, a home. He inhabited not just a time but places, streets, rooms, countrysides, and by his presence in the flesh he changed them all. The memory of this has never died because his continuing presence by grace, faith, and sacrament still does the same in the world through his body, which is the church, enfleshed locally in the liturgical assembly.

It goes counter to Christian instinct, therefore, that the place in which the church assembles should be devoid of all evidence of his presence or that this presence should be regarded as temporary, capricious, or discrete so as not to restrict him or inconvenience the assembly. He restricted himself by becoming incarnate, and the assembly’s only inconvenience is his real absence.

Raw space becomes liturgical place through the change his presence by grace, faith, and sacrament causes. Liturgical place is thus not a monument to the pastor’s tastes or the locale in which the assembly feels most comfortable. Jesus Christ’s incarnate presence caused notable discomfort even for those who loved him best, and he is reported to have resorted to violence on one occasion when faced with the obduracy of the temple clergy’s tastes. Liturgical place belongs to the assembly only because the space it occupies is first his. He alone makes it a place by specifying its meaning as distinct from all others. To this specification the assembly can only be obedient; for it the assembly can only pray even as it cooperates with him by faith in its specification.

What the church building shelters and gives setting for is the faithful assembly, the church, in all its rich diversity of orders from catechumen to penitent, from youngest server to eldest bishop. As it meets for worship of the Source and Redeemer of all, the assembly is the fundamental sacrament of God’s pleasure in Christ on earth. The eucharistic food and drink are the sacred symbol of this ecclesial reality, which Paul calls simply Christ’s body. Christian instinct has been to house this assembly as elegantly as possible, avoiding tents, bedrooms, and school basements.

The assembly uses its place to do something in. This is the liturgy, by which the assembly celebrates the nuptials of all things with their Creator. Because the celebration outstrips being merely an instruction, a pageant, a meditation, a preachment, or an act of therapy, the assembly, as a rule, has kept its place open for movement on the part of all. Furniture is used for a public purpose and for those who find it difficult to stand or move.

The strong and elemental openness of liturgical place makes for dynamism and interest. It is a vigorous arena for conducting public business in which petitions are heard, contracts entered into, relationships witnessed, orations declaimed, initiations consummated, vows taken, authority exercised, laws promulgated, images venerated, values affirmed, banquets attended, votes cast, the dead waked, the Word deliberated, and parades cheered. It is acoustically sonorous, rarely vacant of sound or motion. It possesses a certain disciplined self-confidence as the center of community life both sacred and secular. It is the Italian piazza, the Roman forum, the Yankee town green, Red Square moved under roof and used for the business of faith. It is not a carpeted bedroom where faith may recline privately with the Sunday papers.

Find the most serviceable places for the altar, font, and chair and leave them there. Altars on wheels, fonts that collapse, and presidential chairs that fold away do not free but neuter liturgical place. Since crucial values are perennial rather than disposable, they flock with usage to sustained focal points and thus help to reduce raw space into human place. Crucial values so incarnated become roots for people’s lives. Gymnasia rarely play a profound role in most people’s maintenance of a secure identity.

Altar and font normally should be fixed, elemental, and powerful in their simplicity, free-standing to allow access from all sides, and worthy of the assembly that surrounds them. The amount of space surrounding each should be scaled to the size of the assembly. Neither altar nor font should be so close to the other as to compete for attention or to confuse each other’s purpose, dignity, and quite different kinds of liturgy. The altar is a Table to dine upon. The font is a pool to bathe in, a womb to be born from, a tomb to be buried in. Bathing and dining areas are rarely found in the same room, except in churches.

The presidential chair should be modest but not trivial. It is best located not primarily in reference to the altar but to the assembly, perhaps in an open area in the nave of the church facing both the lectern and altar along with the rest of the assembly. This would shift the ceremonial focus of the liturgy, except for the eucharistic prayer, into the midst of the assembly itself, where it seems to belong given the nature of Christian worship. Outside baptism and the eucharistic banquet, the form this worship normally takes is that of a liturgy of the Word in which the Word is heard and responded to by the whole assembly, ministers included. Locating the ministerial area and the president’s chair in the midst of the assembly may thus be the most versatile arrangement.

As the name implies, the lectern is a reading stand rather than a shrine competing with font and altar. The shrine of the gospel book is the altar. The shrine of the gospel itself is the life of the faithful assembly that celebrates the Word liturgically. The gospel book, which is “sacramental” of all this, is constantly in motion, being carried, held, opened, read from, closed, and laid rather than left somewhere behind votive lights or under lock and key.

The altar and the baptismal font are the primary spatial foci of the liturgy. The altar Table is kept free of contraptions such as elaborate bookstands, pots, cruets, plastic things, electrical apparatus, aids to piety, and the efforts of floral decorators. The book of the Word and the sacrament of the Word are adornment enough.

The baptismal area is kept free of rumpled vestments, cotton wads, stacks of reading material, and folding chairs. The pool itself is kept clean. It contains what is called “living water” not because things grow in it but because it moves to give life to those who lie in death’s bonds.

Liturgical things are designed for the assembly’s purpose. The church building houses the assembly. It is neither a museum for ecclesiastical art nor a pious attic. All it contains should possess a sober splendor congruent with the assembly and its sacred intent.

Bread and wine should be just that, not plastic disks and grape juice, not corn chips and lemonade. The assembly uses bread and wine as food and drink in the Eucharist. These should be present in form, quality, and quantity to correspond with a banquet’s usual liberality, keeping in mind, however, that this banquet’s purpose is not to fill bellies but to give thanks to the Source and Redeemer of all things. The Eucharist, like the Supper that remains its prototype, fills one with more than food, rejoices hearts with more than wine.

Cups, plates, flagons, and bread boxes should be ample. Cluttering the altar with many small cups is logistically and symbolically inelegant. Use one cup of some significance together with a clear glass or crystal flagon large enough to fill smaller cups for Communion later. The same principle holds for the bread plate: Use a single large one from which bread can be transferred to smaller plates for Communion later. The Eucharist that becomes a fast-food operation might be compared to a baptism that proceeds from eye-droppers or aerosol cans.

Vestments are sacred garments rather than costumes or billboards. They are meant to designate certain ministers in their liturgical function by clothing creatures in beauty. Their symbolic strength comes not from their decoration but from their texture, form, and color. The basic vestment of major ministers is the stole, which bishops and presbyters wear around the neck and deacons wear over the left shoulder. No other ministers wear stoles in the Roman Rite. Ministers ordained to lesser orders may wear albs. When laypersons carry out liturgical duties it is more fitting that they wear their own clothes as members of the assembly, which is no mean dignity in itself. Dalmatic, chasuble, cope, and miter can be handsome garments and should be worn as complements to the assembly whose purpose at worship is never merely utilitarian but festive.

Books are means rather than ends. Even so, they should be worthy of the Word they record and of those among whom the Word has taken flesh.

Good images are neither accidents nor fantasies but knowledgeable accomplishments that go beyond what can be observed either now or in time past. As John Meagher says, they are meant to evoke the presence of mysteries the mind has glimpsed, to remind us of the ancestral heritage of worship, to tease us out of mere thought lest we forget that history does not fence in truth, that we may not substitute critical understanding for reverence, that our knowledge is not so complete or accomplished as we often assume, and above all that our memories mix with our longings and our joys to put us in touch with our deepest sense of home.

Churches are not carpeted. While rugs and runners may occasionally enhance liturgical place by adding festal color, carpeting in quantity wearies the eye and muffles sound. Even with a good electronic sound system, which is a rarity, a carpeted church often has all the acoustical vigor of an elevator. The ambiance of a carpeted church, moreover, is too soft for the liturgy, which needs hardness, sonority, and a certain bracing discomfort, much like the Gospel itself. Liturgical ambiance must challenge, for one comes to the liturgy to transact the public business of death and life rather than to be tucked in with fables and featherpuffs. The liturgy challenges what Quentin Crisp calls the general notion of Christianity as a consolatory religion, as something nice that Jesus of Nazareth could say to those who turn to him for comfort.

Furniture is significant and kept to a minimum. Pews, which entered liturgical place only recently, nail the assembly down, proclaiming that the liturgy is not a common action but a preachment perpetuated upon the seated, an ecclesiastical opera done by virtuosi for a paying audience. Pews distance the congregation, disenfranchise the faithful, and rend the assembly. Filling a church with immoveable pews is similar to placing bleachers directly on a basketball court: It not only interferes with movement but changes the event into something entirely different. Pews are never mentioned in Roman rubrics, nor is there any record that being without pews has ever killed Christians in significant numbers.

Banners are decorative images, not ideological broadsides or opportunities for tricky piety. Rather than a festal gesture for the assembly, banners often are a form of disposable ecclesiastical art bearing disposable thoughts which foster disposable piety. Such banners should be disposed of.