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I'm not sure I understand "Better in church in jeans than not at all". Why are these the only two choices, folks? In America, we are blessed enough so that poverty is not usually the issue. If people were meeting with the President, or meeting an idol of some sort (movies, sports, etc) most would take some care as to their dress. It does not need to be a fashion show, and shouldn't be...but, we ARE going into the Presence of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Why we slouch into His Presence in clothes we CERTAINLY wouldn't wear to meet secular officials, I don't quite gather. I agree with Alice's observation that as every Sunday is a mini-Resurrection, we should go rejoicing, dressed decently, as for a celebration. But, I am quite sorry to disagree...there ARE more choices than jeans or not at all. Parents, by the way, can help foster the correct attitude by purchasing COMFORTABLE, MODEST CLOTHES for their children...including shoes they can stand in, and dresses that don't have mesh petticoats that itch...and cotton shirts and trousers for boys, so that they don't sweat to death with polyester...these are inexpensive, believe it or not, at many decent children's stores. I QUITE agree with bringing clothes and doing the "quick-change" act...and then going to the park, or to play with friends...It teaches children that respect for the House of God comes first, while simplifying the timetable of parents who may not be able to run home, change the kids, and then run out again. Gaudior, who understands that sometimes, all someone has is jeans, and simply points out that there may be ONE person like that (from poverty) in any given parish. The rest...are...well... 
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I'm glad someone posted again to this thread, because I had lost track of it and wanted to share an interesting anecdote of a localized schism that occurred in the Latin Church and really began over the issue of attire. From the History of Rush Lake Township in Otter Tail County, MN [ jsenterprises.com] Rush Lake, the location of the second permanent settlement in the county, was first settled by a colony of Germans in the summer of 1866. The leader of the colony was a German Catholic priest. He and his people came from St. Joseph, Mercer County, Ohio, and within a few years, their farms were in a high state of cultivation. They had good houses and barns and large orchards, were free from debt and had money at interest. These people left Ohio on account of some religious difficulty, and under the leadership of their priest, Joseph M. Albrecht, came in a body to Otter Tail County to make their permanent home.
At the time of coming Father Albrecht was sixty-six and in excellent health. He came to this country about 1850 from Baden, Germany, where he owned property to the value of sixty thousand dollars. This property was called "Albrecht Castle." Father Joseph was not educated for the priesthood and while still living in Germany was married. He was a very high spirited man, full of ambition, bold and daring in his undertaking, with a determination of mind that would brook no resistance. Through the influence of his wife he was induced to enter the priesthood, and with her consent a mutual agreement was made that they would separate and each lead a spiritual life to the end of their days. Whereupon the castle was sold and both joined the Society of the Most Precious Blood. This society was founded in Italy (1821) with the approval of the Pope.
In his religious views and practices Father Joseph was a little eccentric, and the following article published in the Fergus Falls Journal on October 9, 1885, would seem to confirm the statement:
For some reason unknown he always avoided meeting the bishop of his diocese and could not be persuaded to meet him under any circumstances. He was very much opposed to pride and vanity, and never delivered a sermon that he would not touch upon these points. In fact it was the main theme of three-fourths of his sermons. He also reproached his fellow clergymen because they tolerated vanity in any form.
He urged most vigorously upon the ladies the importance of wearing plain dresses and sun bonnets, without ribbons or flowers. When the crinolines came into fashion they were a thorn in his eyes and he grew ecstatic every time he spoke against the wearing of the detested raiment. Strangely enough his attitude against this fashion was the sole cause of his organizing a colony to go west.
On one Sunday in the spring of 1866, several of the young ladies ventured to enter into his church wearing hoop skirts with flowers and silk ribbons on their bonnets. He noticed them during his sermon, at once made them the subjects of his remarks and closed by forbidding the ladies to enter thereafter the church so clothed. As if they were giving offense to the whole congregation, it made the young ladies blush. He warned them under a penalty of some severe punishment, but the ladies, notwithstanding his stern command, did, on the afternoon of the same day, enter the church dressed as they were in the forenoon. This was more than the nervous system of Reverend Albrecht could bear. He very calmly walked to the pulpit, took down the gospel book, read a chapter appropriate to the occasion, after which he took a long hickory rod and drove them out of the church. He touched the poor little ducks moderately with the goad, but the ladies, seeing that he meant business, promptly walked out (note: ran out screaming, by another account).
Although Fr. Albrecht wrote a letter in October to his archbishop in Ohio, retracting what he said and asking for reconciliation, he left Ohio for Minnesota without having reconciled officially.
... It was shortly after (his) suspension that he organized his colony and moved to Rush Lake, as before stated, coming from St. Paul with wagons by the way of the old Crow Wing Trail.
After the colony had fairly settled down, and built their winter quarters; the old missionary Pierce paid them a visit, he having heard of the difficulties in Ohio, and tried to persuade Albrecht to be reconciled with the Bishop of Minnesota, and submit himself to his church authority. This Father Joseph promised to do. Whereupon Reverend Pierce gave him authority to carry on his church work, with the further admonition that he must go to Bishop (Thomas) Grace (OP, Bishop of St. Paul) and obtain his credentials of ordination in order to perform the functions of the church in the Diocese of St. Paul. For this purpose Reverend Pierce supplied him with a letter of recommendation.
and left for Rush Lake without his credentials or any authority whatever. But he kept on with his religious functions the same as any ordained priest, and a few of his main supporters among the colony advised him not to pay any attention to the bishop, a course he afterwards followed.
Bishop (Thomas) Grace, (OP, Diocese of St. Paul) receiving intelligence of his conduct, paid him a visit at this distant outpost of his diocese, and tried to reconcile him with the church. But Father Albrecht continued obstinate, cIaiming that he had done nothing wrong and therefore had nothing to answer for.
After that the venerable old missionary, Weninger, came up to see him; also Bishop (Rupert) Seidenbush (Vicar Apostolic of Northern Minnesota) of St. Cloud, but all to no avail. After this he was excommunicated but to this he paid no attention,
But he was not so much to blame as those who supported him in his opposition to the authority of the church. They would not permit him to obey the Bishop, fearing that he would remove him to some other congregation far from them. Father Albrecht was old and weak minded and therefore easily controlled by his supporters.
The sole object of this colony in moving out into the far West was their wish to be alone; to establish themselves far from the busy and hustling world where they could bring up their children according to their own belief, have their own private schools and carry out their religious ideas unmolested. But they were mistaken in supposing that they could escape western civilization. After a few years of hardship on the part of the colony the Northern Pacific Railroad was surveyed and located through their locality. Upon this, some of the colonists looked with hostile eyes. They could not prevent its being built, but they would have prevented it had it been possible. They were a good class of people to do business with, always paying cash for everything. They would not allow a store bill to run over one month. They were very close in making a bargain, but once the bargain was made they always had the cash ready to lay down. They never meddled with politics, but always voted the Democratic ticket. They were not office seekers. It required considerable urging to induce them to accept a township office, but when they did accept an office, their duties were carried out to the letter.
In the spring of 1879, the entire convent building was destroyed by fire, including the chapel, barn and other buildings. The loss amounted to about six thousand dollars. There was no insurance on the building, but sufficient money was raised to rebuild the chapel. Other buildings were also constructed, the total expense reaching about eight thousand dollars.
Reverend Albrecht died in the spring of 1884, at the age of eighty-four, and as there was no provision made for a successor, the congregation was left without a head. As soon as the last will of Albrecht was published, some difficulty arose among the members of the congregation because some were not recognized in the will as they had expected to be. The Bishop offered them a priest, but the congregation would not agree. As a result a sharp division arose among them. Those who were recognized in the will owned the church properly by virtue of the will and were opposed to the proposition made by the bishop. Therefore those who were in favor of having a priest had to withdraw from the contest. Some joined the recognized church at St. Joseph and others became identified with the Catholic church at Perham, while the victorious ones sold their own personal property, as well as the property of the convent.
They then borrowed some money on the church real estate and moved to Oregon, taking with them the remains of Father Joseph, who had been buried in the chapel. They exhumed his body one night, and the same night placed it on the train and started in the morning for the far West.
Among those who moved to Oregon, besides the brothers and sisters of the convent, were the following: A. Bender (leader), A. Silbernagle, Joseph Reister, 0. Boedigheimer, C. Felz, F. Boedigheimer and J. Boedigheimer. Thus ended the history of the first Catholic church in the county. The descendants of these worthy people are now numbered with the most substantial and highly respected people of the county. I first heard this story some years back and always wondered what had happened to the colony once it went west. To my surprise, recently, a poster on another forum mentioned the indomitable Father Albrecht. Turned out she was from the town where the disaffected colony ended up after their westward trek with Father Joseph's remains. So, I got to hear, finally, the last chapter. Although, the relevance to this thread was in the italicized text above, I suspect that curiousity about the story's outcome will have affected a couple folk, so I'll finish the story, as related to me by my correspondent from Oregon: I grew up in Our Lady of Lourdes parish, in Jordan, Oregon. It turns out that when those settlers arrived in Jordan (already settled by other Christian pioneers, including some other Catholics) they built a 12 x 15 foot shrine in which they placed Fr. Albrecht's (stolen) body in a glass-covered casket! According to the parish history, "It became an annual job to wash and re-dress the corpse. Father Albrecht was in his priestly clothes. Candles were kept burning around the casket." They still kept to Fr. Albrecht's strict dictates, but they had no priest. In fact, when a visiting priest criticized the parish trustees for neither securing a priest nor allowing anyone else to do so, they banished him from Jordan.
Without going into too much detail, suffice to say that the men Fr. Albrecht left as trustees continued his stubborn and misguided ways for about another twenty years after they got to Oregon. They definitely continued to be schismatic after Fr. Albrecht's death, even though they didn't think so. It was a combination of stubbornness and ignorance. They even wrote the Pope from Oregon, convinced he could help them get the local bishop off of their backs.
Although Archbishop William Gross ordered the Albrecht shrine removed in June of 1885, that did not happen until Father Joseph Bucholzer set fire to the chapel in 1899. The parishioners gathered the ashes of Father Albrecht and buried him in the cemetary apart from the other graves - in the Pioneer Cemetary, that would be where his grave is. I always thought that his was the single large cross that dominates the cemetary. I cannot imagine they buried him without a marker! Come to think of it, though, his may not have a name attached to it. After all, everyone would have known who was buried there. The church site was moved around the time he was interred, and there were hard feelings and stubbornness around that, too. Memory eternal to Father Joseph. Curiously, these (at least for a time) bezpopovtsy Latins were located only about 35 or 40 miles from the bezpopovtsy Old Believer colony in Woodburn, OR. Many years, Neil, who never found a story that he thought was too long to tell, according to his wife and children 
"One day all our ethnic traits ... will have disappeared. Time itself is seeing to this. And so we can not think of our communities as ethnic parishes, ... unless we wish to assure the death of our community."
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