§ III. On the Wearing of Habit and Tonsure

1088. • Clerics, at least those initiated in major Orders, are obliged to wear the tonsure and clerical garment. This is clear from the whole of Canon Law, especially from the Council of Trent, Sess. 14. c. 6 de Ref., where it is said: "For although habit does not make a Monk, nevertheless clerics ought always to wear garments proper and congruent to their Order, so that through the decency of exterior habit they may show the intrinsic honesty of morals." Moreover in the same place it is enjoined on Bishops that they seriously warn transgressors, and, if they do not obey, remove them from sacred functions.

But the clerical habit is various for various regions. Speaking of habit, the Fathers of the Plenary Council of Baltimore II² prescribe these things: 1° "We wish that ... while they are acting at home or in church, they always use the cassock, which is proper to a Cleric. When they go outside for the sake of office or of recreating the mind, or on a journey, it is permitted to be clothed in something shorter, which nevertheless is of black color, and is drawn below the knees." 2° "Let them not cultivate hair and beard studiously, or after the manner of laymen. Pope Pius IX recently condemned the long beard of Clerics.³ We command all ecclesiastics in this matter to follow the custom of the Roman Church as the norm to be followed."

"In this region the tonsure for the most part is not made except in the initiation itself; since we live among heretics, for whom it would foster derision without profit of religion." Thus Kenrick.