The Columbus Dispatch recently printed a story on dressing appropriately for worship.  The story quoted Fr. Andre-Joseph LaCasse, O.P., the pastor of our Dominican parish of St. Patrick in downtown Columbus, OH. 

Dressing up, or down, for church

Friday, June 5, 2009 3:12 AM
BY MEREDITH HEAGNEY
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Dressing for Church -- What's appropriate for summer?

Surrounded by women wearing knee-length skirts, Anne Wynne cringed at the jeans she had worn to Mass.
Making matters worse, she ended up sitting toward the front of the congregation at St. Patrick Church on a recent Sunday.

"I felt so embarrassed," she said. "All these people can see my jeans."

Too bad Wynne was behind on laundry. Denim was her only choice.

Worshippers at St. Patrick, a Downtown Catholic church, tend to dress more formally than at other houses of worship, where Wynne's outfit would have fit right in.

At some congregations, collared shirts and skirts are the norm. Other places, a churchgoer would earn peculiar looks for getting so gussied up.

As warmer weather exposes more skin, clergy members look for tactful ways to tell people to save their short-shorts and tank tops for the amusement park.

The synagogue is "not a beach," said Rabbi Naphtali Weisz of Beth Jacob Congregation on the East Side. Though he doesn't say that to people who are improperly dressed, he sometimes asks his wife to talk to women on his behalf. But not often, he added, because people at his synagogue dress conservatively.

A congregation's fashion sense often reflects how it sees itself in relation to the culture.

"There's a reverence we show our Lord," said Nikki Dzikowski, who walked out of St. Patrick in a yellow, brown and green skirt and wearing heels. Her four young daughters played on the church steps in dresses.

"By preparing ourselves outwardly, it's a sign of how we prepare ourselves inwardly."

Other St. Patrick parishioners echoed her sentiment, pointing out that dressing up signals the seriousness of the occasion.

For their pastor, the Rev. Andre-Joseph LaCasse, formality is not as important as covering up. Every summer in the church bulletin, he asks parishioners to dress with modesty.

"Part of respecting the temple of the Holy Spirit is to wear proper clothing," he said.

Still, it's important to welcome everyone no matter how they dress, he said. At a recent Sunday Mass, a handful of worshippers wore T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops.

Such outfits wouldn't raise an eyebrow at Xenos Christian Fellowship, with worship centers on the North Side and elsewhere.

At Xenos, people are free to wear what makes them comfortable, whether that means dressing up or down, said the Rev. Gary DeLashmutt. That way, they can better focus on the substance of the worship, the pastor said.

DeLashmutt believes that embracing the increasingly casual culture makes more sense than opposing it. His own preaching wardrobe is "business casual or less," depending on his audience.

"That's the same reason why, when you teach the Bible, you're not teaching in Greek, you're teaching in English," he said. "The whole point is to make God's word understandable and accessible to people."

At the Orthodox Beth Jacob synagogue, those who attend most regularly tend to dress the most respectfully, Weisz said.

Nor do they have to be told that women are expected to wear skirts that cover the knees and sleeves that cover the elbows. Men are to wear long pants. Married women cover their heads for modesty, while the men wear yarmulkes "to constantly remember God above," Weisz said.

But, he pointed out, how people look does not indicate how they communicate with God.

"Worship is an experience of the heart," he said. "Externalities don't matter all that much. A person can be very devout and pray at home in their pajamas."