…I finally retrieved my cassock and cotta from Parcelforce today. It was sent early this month, but Parcelforce continually tried to deliver it (or said they did) but did not leave a card. Thus, I didn’t know they had been doing this until the vestment company called to ask whether I’d received it. We determined that Parcelforce should try delivery to St. Matthew’s Church next door, and they assured us that they would (on the 15th) but never bothered. Yesterday they delivered it to the church and I picked it up before going off to my Business Committee of Bishop’s Council meeting and
I will ensure that HWMBO takes a picture of me wearing the outfit plus the biretta that St. John’s clergy and servers usually wear. I haven’t worn a cassock for almost thirty years now.
Recalling my days as an altar boy…
A quick look at your Wikipedia link points out that the cotta is a form of the surplice, which is what we used to call it; ours were much shorter than the one pictured in the article and had no lace, however.
Our parish had two kinds of cassock: red for choir boys (the boys’ choir, unfortunately, performed on an irregular basis, mostly for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve) and black for altar boys.
The way we remembered which garment was which, and in what order to put them on, was that the cassock was the floor-length dress and the surplice, being “surplus”, was the shorter piece that went on over the top.
We always had black cassocks (which were pretty smelly as young boys sweat a lot) short cottas, and very tall white collars with a black clip-on tie for the front–more like a Christmas bow than a regular tie. Black for usual wear, white for great festivals. We all forgot the white ties and got reprimanded by Fr. Rosenkrantz, who we found out years later was a complete shit of a pedophile who molested some of us (not me; I was too fat) and got moved on to molest again.
My cotta is quite a bit longer than the usual; it covers a multitude of sins!