A specific dress for the priest or the religious is not something indispensable. But conventionally such a dress for the priest or religious has its practical uses.

1. In the first place, the special dress denotes the special office, the individual holds as a priest or the fact that one is a religious or further that one belongs to a particular religious order. The religious dress serves as a mark of status identification.

2. The religious habit is a means of silent witnessing to 'Christ and the Christian faith', wherever one may happen to be, whether on a bus or train, in a public place, or just walking along the road, in the same way as the yellow robes of bhikkhus are a silent witness to the ascetically ideals of Buddhism. A country or nation or institution is represented by its flag. The dress of the priest or of the religious is as it were a 'flag' for Christ and Christianity. It is a means of silent proclamation.

3. Identification by the religious dress may provide one with pastoral opportunities. For instance, one who would not normally open one's heart to a stranger, might do so on recognizing by the dress a priest or a religious.

4. The cassock or the religious habit is a symbol only of one's state of life, not of one's personal virtue. The habit can however be a moral support and protection to the wearer. It not only tells others around what one's state of life and of the need both to protect oneself from danger to it and to strive constantly to make oneself more and more worthy of it.

5. We are concerned about inculturation. In a country where the ministers of the traditional religions wear a religious dress, as do for instance, the bhikkhus of Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand, shouldn't Catholic priests and religious too do the same?

6. A national dress could be adopted as a religious garb if by shape and form and design, its distinctiveness and uniformity in use, it is recognizable as a religious habit, such as the sari of Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity, which by its specific design has become a distinctive religious habit.

7. The law of the Church requires that clerics wear an 'ecclesiastical' dress distinct from the 'secular' clothes of the laity. "Clerics are to wear suitable ecclesiastical dress, in accordance with the norms established by the Episcopal Conference and legitimate local custom." (Can. 284). While the Episcopal Conference and custom may allow change in shape, colour and design, the specific character of the dress of the cleric being 'ecclesiastical' has to be maintained.