While it is true that the Russian True Orthodox clergy and monastics during Soviet times did not wear any outward signs of their vocations in order to be free to move about and minister to the Faithful without being arrested or shot, we who for the time being still live in relative freedom of religious practice should consider these two articles that demonstrate the terrible mistake of dispensing with the strict traditional standard grooming and dress for clergy and monastics of the Orthodox Church. If we submit to the "terrors for children" of a dirty look or an "alqaida comment, how shall we be able to stand firm if threatened with beatings, imprisonment, tortures, or death?
Here are then are two articles, one by an ecumenist Coptic priest, and another by a Catholic layman who is a well-known writer and college professor. They are like scouts who have run ahead of the pack and discovered that modern dispensing of traditional appearance is a bad move because both of these religious organizations having embraced modernism in many quarters and found it is full of negative consequences and the loss of many good things preserved by maintaining tradition. It is surprising then that the Orthodox Ecumenists are still so blindly gleeful to embark and join their foray into secularization. The heresies of the Latins and Copts aside, these two writers underscore why the World Orthodox should abandon the ecumenist agenda and why we who are Traditionalist Genuine Orthodox Christians are so blessed to have men and women monastics and to have clergy who are able to stand up to an opposing "culture" and be a witness to the True Faith.
The Roman Catholic Article: http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashi ... aily-life/
The Coptic Priest Article: http://goodguyswearblack.org/2015/09/08 ... y-cassock/