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June 25th, 2006

The final countdown

This week is final final deadline week for the book. It’s all getting a bit stressful, but hopefully everything that needs to be drawn, scanned and edited will get done and my sanity will escape as unscathed as one could hope under the circumstances. I hope to blog every day, but my contributions may be lacking in lustre. We shall see. In the meantime any advice you can give on any of these topics would be a great help. Seriously, anything. The smallest of mentions in the ‘Vicar’s study’ comments provided some great material.

Vestments (continued)
What is the difference between a biretta and a canterbury cap? I have no idea. And is there any joke you can make about a chasuble? Or in fact any individual vestment. Vestments – they really should be funny. Gah.

Marches and processions
What interesting things could happen when a church group goes on a procession of witness around the town centre? Do you like marching, or hate it?

Tracts
What interesting and unusual tracts or leaflets are kept at the back of your church?

Thanks again. You are great examples to your collective selves.

Update: More great input – thank you. Please do carry on. Any further thoughts, especially on leaflets kept at the back of your church would be great.

27 Comments »



This is a single Cartoon Blog entry, posted by Dave on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 8:14 pm.

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27 Responses to “The final countdown”


  1. Larry Day says:

    Dave, your book is going to brilliant and sell like hot cakes at Greenbelt. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Its all for control freaks. You are a pioneer and a great one at that

    June 25th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
  2. Cathryn says:

    I agree – the book is going to be class.
    Vestments – probably not helpful but our Vicar doesn’t seem to wear them very often, but seems to take on the appearance of a giant bat when he takes funerals. Once after a funeral I asked the churchwarden to mind my dog for 5 mins and later heard reports of a small border terrier running round the local Tesco Express followed by a churchwarden and an enormous batlike creature wearing a dog collar. That image will stay with me forever – and not in a good way!

    June 25th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
  3. Johann says:

    No vestments in our church in hot weather – noone seems to mind, so why wear them at all? On the other hand, in another church I know, the Vicar took great delight in wearing his embroidered cope over his surplice at special celebratory services even in the hottest of weather. Phew!
    Ithink a biretta is a square cap worn only by RC clergy (3 or 4 projections, different colours for priests/bishops/cardinals)? Don’t know about the canterbury cap – an Anglican version?

    June 25th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
  4. Kyle says:

    A Canterbury cap has three corners, while a biretta has four.

    June 25th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
  5. Freedom Bound says:

    Isn’t the Canterbury Cap what good protestants use instead of the rhythm method?

    Will I go to hell for saying that??

    Knowing most vicars’ taste in clothing (those lovely jumpers) I’m glad for vestments! The less of some personalities pushed onto worship the better…….. ;-)

    June 25th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
  6. John says:

    The Church English Dictionary (long out of print, sadly) defined a biretta as “a hard square hat worn by a hard square clergyman”. Seems about right to me.

    June 25th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
  7. ash says:

    All the churches in our town were invited to do a ‘pentecost walk of unity’. Unfortunately, someone had the bright idea of making us all wear orange for pentecost…

    I got into a wee discussion with an Irish member of the church, asking him whether we’d be mistaken for Orange Men. Luckily, we were a month or so early.

    June 25th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
  8. Nefertiki says:

    I know others have already given above but I went ahead with another one as I was ready to paste a definition I found here:

    http://www.dpsw.org/words.htm

    Biretta – A kind of cap worn by the clergy. In the eighteenth century it was transformed from the soft, functional headwear seen in Renaissance paintings into a stiff, ornamental thing characterized by three vertical ridges and topped with a pompom. English custom retained a softer form, but developed four sharp corners; the English square the cap is now often called a “Canterbury cap.” (The academic “mortarboard” is a further development of the same type of cap.)

    June 25th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
  9. MadPriest says:

    Joke – chasuble – sponsored by…. CofE financial crisis means looking for alternative ways of raising money so we go down the football shirt/snooker player/tennis player route. That sort of thing.

    June 25th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
  10. Nefertiki says:

    I really like the Anglican Glossary where I found the biretta definition. There is a lot of what could be fun stuff in it. I had a few fairly lame ideas but perhaps you can do something with them.

    dalmatica – a sort of tunic worn by the clergy but mainly deacons. Once worn in Dalmatia, present-day Croatia.

    Ladies bustling about with church decorations etc. One of them turns to a young lad coming in with a dog on a leash, and says to him, “I told you the vicar wants his dalmatica, not his dalmatian!”

    oh well.

    then there are two women in a garden perhaps knitting. One says to the other, “My Dudley wants to be a priest but I doubt he could ever pronounce quinquagesima.”

    June 25th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
  11. Michelle says:

    What about something along the lines of ‘what the priest wears under his* cassock’? Johann talking about the hot weather got me thinking… and I’ve taken some funerals uncomfortably togged up in very hot weather!

    “It may be an extremely hot day, but Auntie Mabel would certainly not approve of being buried by a vicar in only England boxers and a cassock!”

    *deliberate use of ‘his’ not ‘his/her’ for all the politically correct concernees out there!

    June 26th, 2006 at 8:33 am
  12. Ruth says:

    Re vestments… clergy-who- happen-to- be-women don’t look good in fiddle back vestments. I know because I look like woman-in-a-tabard when I have to wear one. Or a dinner lady.

    And I haven’t mastered the biretta yet either because you get hat-hair. You know, when its all flattened when you take it off. Its okay for men with no hair but I only know of one woman priest who was prepared to shave her head to wear one.

    June 26th, 2006 at 9:13 am
  13. Moog says:

    I remember as a teenager going on ‘walks of witness’ with a neighbouring church who still lived in the 1950s, it used to frustrate me singing all these old hymns and being completely irrelevent. One year I made my own banner to carry round, which read ‘the writers of these songs are dead, but God isn’t’

    June 26th, 2006 at 9:14 am
  14. Ruth says:

    And I HATE marches of witness through the High Street. I don’t think anyone ever joined a church because they saw a bunch of sad old people dragging a cross along the pavement singing half heartedly and avoiding eye contact with angry shoppers who are forced on to the street risking life and limb.

    June 26th, 2006 at 9:16 am
  15. Tiffer says:

    Click my name for some vestment action

    June 26th, 2006 at 9:29 am
  16. Dave Faulkner says:

    Vestments – an Anglican friend of mine swears this is true. These days he is a canon, then he was a reader. He is very much low church evangelical and went to a very high church to lead worship one Sunday. He thought he ought to be respectful of the local traditions, even though it was not his cup of tea. Dutifully he put on all the robes he could find in the vestry. After the service, the vicar’s wife spoke to him. “Lovely service, but there’s just one thing: my husband doesn’t usually wear the bookmark.”

    Now there has to be a cartoon in that one day …

    June 26th, 2006 at 9:44 am
  17. Richard says:

    Processions – the closest we get is the Palm Sunday processions, which is usually just an opportunity to see who has got a new car, as we now only go around the car park, as the hill down from the church is a bit steep for the choir. :D The other challenge is for the organist, who has to work out what key the choir have ended up singing the processional hymn in just as we’re coming through the door.

    June 26th, 2006 at 10:01 am
  18. Richard says:

    Vestment wise there is probably a lot of mileage in what clergy wear under their cassock. In high summer our previous rector would usually wear shorts and T-shirt under her cassock, but most people would only realise if they were around fairly early when she arrived for the service. It has to be said, that at her funeral a few years back, which was on one of the hottest days of the year, the ladies of the choir did much the same in her honour…

    June 26th, 2006 at 10:05 am
  19. Rob says:

    A Canterbury cap is a four-cornered cloth cap that is sometimes worn by Anglican clergy. A Biretta is an automatic pistol, once favoured by James Bond.

    I also something of an old joke about vestments in the vestry, so what is in the pantry?

    June 26th, 2006 at 10:20 am
  20. Clare says:

    Processions – the back is always singing at a different time to the front. And the organ is always at a differnt point to you when you arrive in the church

    Bit like that bit on Sorry I Haven’t a Clue when they have to carry on singing when the backing music stops and then see how close they are when it comes back on again.

    June 26th, 2006 at 11:27 am
  21. Russ says:

    Random scribblings that may help:
    1 Vicars I know like unlikely coloured scarf things (I forget the technical word) and shirts. I appreciate this may not help if your book isn’t including colour …
    2 Fonts are rich sources of amusement
    3 Vicars struggling with Powerpoint, video projection and microphones have given us a giggle over the years
    4 The annual Palm Sunday amble around the church waving bits of foliage while attempting to sing something suitable often disintegrates into an unholy rabble intent on horticultural vandalism
    5 What do vicars keep in the pulpit? Socks, small furry animals, sweets, hand-held consoles, and body armour for the annual sermon on giving …
    Hope this helps a bit
    Russ :)

    June 26th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
  22. Kathryn says:

    Don’t know if this is any use, but there’s a lovely tale of a priest staying at a hotel before one of those big AngloCatholic hoolies…Glastonbury?Walsingham? it doesn’t matter…the point is, he came up from dinner to find that the chambermaid had unpacked for him, leaving his pyjamas on one pillow on the double bed, and his lovely lacey cotta on the other.
    Might that work??
    Also, I was once in a procession that got grid locked and had to keep on signing “Lift High the Cross” while the clergy were got out to sanctuary in the Sanctuary…whereupon the congregation mostly headed back to the pews.

    June 26th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
  23. Michelle says:

    I visited a local church recently to preach there and hidden in the pulpit was an unused OHP! Good job I prefer preaching from the lecturn anyway!

    June 26th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
  24. Ali says:

    Leaflets at the back of churches are many and varied, but almost always a good proportion seem to be out of date…

    Sometimes years out of date. I’ve yet to find a leaflet advertising an event before I was born, but I’m sure it’s possible.

    June 26th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
  25. Dave says:

    Thanks for all these superb responses. The tracts cartoon is now done. I have printed off these 24 comments and will be meditating upon them during the day.

    June 27th, 2006 at 10:06 am
  26. Chris says:

    No doubt you’ve already covered this angle, but I also get slightly confused between a “cassock” and a “hassock”. That could lead to some interestingly-shaped clergy outfits.

    June 27th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
  27. Nefertiki says:

    I wish I’d used “dalmatic” in #10 – I think it works better than dalmatica.

    June 27th, 2006 at 8:43 pm