My blog series on the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) and the COVID pandemic has caught the attention of at least one person in St Marys, Kansas, USA. So I’ll say hello here to all the other St Marys residents too.
Hello to St Marys, Kansas!!
St Marys, Kansas, is a town with a population of about 2600 people, and a size of 3.05 km2. It is apparently an SSPX-dominated stronghold, but there are other churches there – Methodist and Baptist – who hopefully keep the SSPX under control. I wonder what they think about their SSPX co-dwellers. If you’re not SSPX, and you live in St Marys, please let me know what it’s like. (If you are SSPX, feel free to let me know too.)
There’s a Catholic church as well, and it seems to belong to the legitimate Catholic Church. Their parish priest and their bishop are legitimate, and their bishop visits them. They promote the use of masks during Mass, as well as social distancing, so they are reasonable people who want to keep others safe. It must be strange for normal Catholics to live in an SSPX town.
The town has a website, and their town’s logo includes two pentagrams. Whatever that means to them. As for the SSPX component, I wonder if they bother with masks at all, or if they’re following quacks in this regard.
I’ll have to do more reading on this place. I found two longer articles. One positive, and one negative. Be wary of both.
The first:
The Christian Withdrawal Experiment – SSPX in Kansas, USA – The Atlantic
The second, from Reddit, I will embed below. It tells of the life of a young child (age 7-13) living in St Marys in an SSPX family. It’s not clear why they moved away, and whether they stuck with the SSPX after that. Note that it’s the childhood recollections of someone who gets a fair bit wrong when he uses Catholic terminology – “enrollment” instead of “annulment” for example, and mixing up the SSPX and FSSP. It may not depict the SSPX accurately, but it is certainly his own valid experience, which is rather disturbing. It sounds similar to non-SSPX cult experiences I’ve read, and it sounds similar to some SSPX experiences I’ve read. The dominating cult atmosphere portrayed in these experiences is not what I experienced attending the local SSPX chapel.
St Marys Kansas SSPX – FSSP is it a cult ? from u/bowsmith745
