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There's a dress code where I go to church. It's been in place since I can remember. Exactly how rigidly it's currently enforced, I no longer know. Nobody has said anything to me about it in years.

Most guys my age show up for church in standard LDS general authority issue-dark suit, white shirt, necktie, oxfords. It's similar to the attire for "Men in Black," but with none of the cool firepower.

I stopped feeling obligated to wear a necktie to church in ... I think it was 1999. It wasn't conscious rebellion. After years of church callings and other mandatory dress code employment, I just didn't feel like neckties anymore.

Note: Stop for just a minute and consider the need to wrap a bit of colored cloth around your neck. If you can't see it as imitatively idiotic, it's only for lack of trying.

I'll still occasionally wear a necktie, most notably at funerals, memorial services, performing marriages, special events, and whenever I'm asked to speak in church — something that almost nev er happens.

There are four neckties in my closet. A blue one, a maroon one, another with Porky Pig on it, and finally a Viagra necktie. I may have other neckties, but I don't know where they are.

Anyway, back to church dress codes. Today, I have my own dress code for sacrament meeting — slacks, an open-collar shirt, socks and shoes. I call it Terrestrial Casual.

You could call this off-the-cuff approach to church attire a lack of respect or deliberate defiance. I prefer to think of it as comfort over conformity. And there's a left-handed benefit in it.

Guys who consistently dress like me are rarely called to positions of great church responsibility — in other words, jobs that are enormous time and energy sucks. So, bonus.

My attire is decidedly underdressed for Mormon worship and, apparently overdressed for some Catholic Masses — at least in Rhode Island.

According to Religion News Service, last week, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island ripped parishioners for "the sloppy and even offensive way people dress while attending Mass in the summertime."

Bishop Tobin didn't come right out and call his flock slobs. He wasn't that general. In a paragraph I wish that I'd written, he got right down to specifics.

"Hirsute flabmeisters spreading out in the pew, wearing wrinkled, very-short shorts and garish, unbuttoned shirts; mature women with skimpy clothes that reveal way too much, slogging up the aisle accompanied by the flap-flap-flap of their flip-flops; hyperactive gum-chewing kids with messy hair and dirty hands, checking their iPhones and annoying everyone within earshot or eyesight," the bishop wrote. " ... C'mon — even in the summer, a church is a church, not a beach or a pool deck."

Now that's the way to call people out when their church dress standard has slipped too far. It's pointed, informative, with just the right amount of ecclesiastical insult.

Some people will argue that God doesn't care how you show up for church so long as you just show up. After all, Jesus never said anything about grooming and dress standards during his ministry. It's true, but I'm betting it was because he didn't have to.

Famously uptight as the Jews were back then, anyone who showed up for religious services half naked probably wouldn't have survived the opening prayer.

I may be spiritually dense and doctrinally indifferent, but I'm smart enough to know when a Porky Pig necktie would definitely cross the line.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley. Find his past columns at http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/kirby.