Saturday I saw a man wearing an alb. I saw another man wearing a clerical collar.
Neither of them was formally on duty, if this is a distinction that exists; the man with the alb was at the greenmarket, the other one was on the subway. Neither was even particularly close to a church, in the sense of a physical structure. Are they not allowed out in street clothes?
If they were Roman Catholic, then wearing a clerical collar even while out shopping is not outside the norm. Technically, priests are supposed to be in clerics all the time except for things like vacation or working out. But many priests will be in civilian clothing for mundane tasks, anyway.
Wearing an alb for mundane tasks is certainly out of the ordinary. A clerical collar is non-liturgical ordinary-wear, as well as for being ‘on the job.’ An alb is strictly for liturgical affairs. Although, you mention that this is a city environment and so, maybe, the cleric was on the way to or from a liturgical event (like a graveside committal) and wearing the alb was just the easiest thing to do.
The clerical collar is standard day wear for a priest/clergyman from the Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and some other churches. It is a uniform specifically designed to mark someone out as a priest in public, so they can be called on at any moment, yes even in a supermarket or on the Tube. It would defeat the object if they never wore it.
The alb, on the other hand, is a bit odd, as they normally only put thus on for church services.
Of course, they do wear civvies sometimes, such as gardening or whatever, but if its a normal working day, the dog collar is on.
The “on vacation” part sounds problematic. Not snark.
A [resbuter (priest or equivalent) wearing a Roman collar (technical term for the reversed collar) will normally wear a black shirt, blouse, or tunic; when black is inappropriate, a neutral color. A bishop wears a purple or red shirt (or other top) with his Roman collar. I believe vocational deacons also wear the same outfit as priests (but am not positive on this).
The long black ‘dress’ fprmerly worn by Roman priests and occasionally bu other clergy is a cassock; an alb is white, and worn by choristers and servers during worship.
There is a rather long and complex vocabulary for the items of clothing worn by priests, deacons, and bishops filling various roles in various forms of worship. E.g., the chasuble, a heavy, ornate, colorful serape-like top, is worn only by the celebrant during Eucharist.
Typically clergy work extremely long hours (visiting the sick + spritual advice + meetings of dozens of parish committees), so the idea of one getting a vaccation when he is on call only if an emergency occurs where he happens to be at the time should not be surprising.
From what I can tell, priests and other clergymen wear their “uniforms” roughly like say… military people do.
For example, most of the priests of my acquaintance wore roman collars and black shirts/slacks to work (teaching), with a few of the more old-school busting out cassocks. When it was “game time”, so to speak, and they had to say a relatively public mass, then out came the albs and cinctures, etc…
However, when they werent “on duty”, they wore normal clothes. I remember having been totally shocked in high school when one of the more old-school priests who wore a black cassock every day showed up to watch football practice wearing a guayabera, khakis and some beat-up old Chucks.
While nowadays most RCC priests do not wear “clergyman” (grey or black clothing and a Roman collar), they’re specifically asked* to wear it or habits when there is a special event in town. And it’s also their version of being more professionally spiffed-up than usual if they’re going to a meeting.
I hang out with ministers who wear their collars most of the time, so if we go out to lunch in the middle of a workday, they’ll be in “Denominational Drag”.
I think it’s pretentious. It’d be like a doctor purposely wearing scrubs out to lunch. Okay, maybe you’re between tightly-scheduled brain transplants (or exorcisms), but mostly I think they want people to respect them. Or at least see them as “playing by a different set of rules”. But how about acting differently (caring about the server at lunch and tipping well, or whatever) to achieve that?
Sorry, it’s a sore spot since one of them introduced themselves to my kids’ friends: “Hi, Sam. Hi, Gracie – I’m Pastor Dean Timmons.” Umm, would you do that if you were Plumber Dean Timmons?
My thought was also that the clergyman may have been wearing a cassock (which is black for priests and Roman prelates (except the Pope, who wears a white cassock — I presume the OP did not see the Holy Father at the Farmer’s Market (but then again, he seems disinclined toward pageantry, so maybe he does buy his own cantaloupes)); Anglican bishops wear an amaranth (purple) cassock).
Albs, coming from the Latin albus meaning “white,” are white.
Albs, at least where I go, are worn by ordained ministers at the Mass. Lay people serving at the altar wear a cassock and surplice. Choristers wear just the cassock. The officiant at the Daily Office also wears a cassock and surplice. Around the parish, the Rector wears a cassock with a pellegrina (the shoulder capelet thing). I don’t know if this is worn outside of the parish (say on clerical visits to the ill).
But apparently, according to Wikipedia, “in some lower and broad Anglican churches, the alb is considered everyday wear.” So who knows?
OP: Was the vested clergyman in white?
He was. That’s one reason I assumed he was wearing an alb, as opposed to some other variety of clerical garb.
My guess, would be a low church Anglican, then. My own feeling is that albs should be reserved for the altar; although wiki says the in the Middle Ages, the alb was worn by clergy outside of liturgical contexts as well.
As to the general question, the priestly vocation is generally considered to be one of those 24/7 things, so in general, priests (of the liturgical denominations, RC, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran — but then I guess the non-liturgical denoms don’t usually call them “priests” anyway) do wear some type of distinctive attire marking them as clergy.