In this Kansas town, an insular Catholic sect leaves some residents feeling left out

The Society of Pius X has transformed life over the four decades it has had a presence in St. Marys

RACHEL MIPRO

Kansas Reflector

July 11, 2024

 

ST. MARYS — A growing Catholic sect has divided this small Kansas town between those who view the church’s influence as idyllic or disturbing.

Shops selling Bibles, crosses and modest garb line the main street, where parents stroll by with their children. American flags dangle to showcase patriotism. There are homes with manicured lawns and shade trees, and parks to play. And on the northern edge of St. Marys stands a 66,400-square-foot church, towering over the town. 

The conservative Catholic sect that built the church has transformed life here since its arrival more than four decades ago. The Society of St. Pius X, also known as SSPX, rejects many modern ways of living, requiring modest dress for women, enforcing strict divisions between genders and encouraging large families. As members of the group have gotten into political leadership, they’ve imposed those beliefs, jettisoning books that mention LGBTQ+ people from the public library and shutting down a municipal swimming pool.

Parishioners highlight the increasing population as a direct link to the church, and they value an insular life. But for residents who fall outside the fold, the Society of St. Pius X’s presence is oppressive. That view is worsened by accusations of sexual abuse from within the church.

For residents devoted to the SSPX faith like Mark Moser, life in St. Marys is carrying out the society’s mission.

“It’s about Catholicism, and following the methods that have been used for centuries,” said Moser, who moved to the town in the early 1980s and now serves on its recreation board. “It was the society that God put in place to continue the tradition of the church.”

Church officials didn’t respond to interview requests for this story. Church officials directed questions to spokesman James Vogel, the editor of St. Marys-based Angelus Press, which publishes Catholic literature. Vogel did not respond to calls or voicemails left at his cellphone and business’ phone, or a text message follow-up. Phone inquiries with SSPX’s U.S. district headquarters in Platte City and in-person and phone inquiries at the St. Marys church office were redirected to Vogel.

While attempting to reach Vogel in-person at Angelus Press, an SSPX priest coincidentally in the bookstore said he could not be interviewed without approval from church authorities.

The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded SSPX in 1970 following changes from the Vatican aimed at modernizing the church. The society arrived in St. Marys in 1978, buying a collection of historical buildings formerly owned by Jesuits and starting St. Mary’s Academy and College.

By 2023, it had finished construction of the $42 million structure named Immaculata. The largest SSPX-built church in the world, the structure features brickwork made to look like limestone, two bell towers and a gold-coated Virgin Mary statue positioned to peer down on the town below.

Since SSPX established itself here, the town population has seen steady growth. Census figures show it’s now home to about 2,800 people — a 50% jump since 1980 and a sharp contrast to declining populations in other rural Kansas communities.

That growth — and the church’s draw from surrounding communities — is evident during a Sunday service at the Immaculata. 

Morning light bathes rows of families filling the wood pews that set up more than 1,500, while others form a long line down the side of the 12-story church, waiting to step into the confessional and unburden their sins. Chapel veils, mostly white, dangle fringe over the women and girls’ faces. With many toddlers and babies in attendance, little heads pop up over the pews. 

But outside the church walls, tension arises.

Hannah Stockman, who grew up in the St. Marys area and moved to town in 2020, refers to herself and other residents who aren’t part of the society as “townies.” 

She motions to the houses around hers to point out that all of her neighbors attend SSPX services. Once, she said, other girls from the neighborhood came into her yard to confront her stepdaughter over a Pride T-shirt.

“It’s hard to fit in unless you go to SSPX,” Stockman said. “And then there’s the townies, who kind of all just stay isolated in their own home.”

Stockman helped organize efforts to save the Pottawatomie Wabaunsee Regional Library in 2022, when the SSPX-dominated city commission debated pulling the library’s lease over its refusal to accept a “morality clause” and remove all material that could be viewed as socially, racially or sexually divisive, including all LGBTQ+ content.

Many non-SSPX residents were afraid to oppose the church, Stockman said, and she described their thought process as: “We stand up, then we will lose our business. Or, if we stand up, my husband will lose his job. Or, if we say something in opposition, there’s a whole array of fear.”

In 2023, the city commission succeeded in forcing the library to remove LGBTQ+ books for youths from the library. While commissioners have no governing power over the library, the branch would be forced to find a new location if the lease weren’t renewed, giving up a community spot it has held for decades.

Library director Judith Cremer, who has commuted to work in St. Marys from Topeka for 20 years, said community relations had settled down since then.

“We’ve always tried to be very welcoming to everybody that walks in the door,” Cremer said. “That’s always been my stand, and that’s how we run the library. It’s hard to be neutral in this world. But we try the hardest we can. We don’t take any sides. And we don’t turn anybody away. And we also don’t make them feel like they don’t belong.”

Moser acknowledged his church is sometimes at odds with people who aren’t a part of it. But he also recognized the political advantages his group holds.

“Who’s going to win? The one with the most numbers,” Moser said. “That sounds way too simplistic. And I don’t mean to just boil it down to that, because I’ve lived here forever and I know lots and lots of town people that are just the best people ever.”

Moser has served on the municipal recreation board for more than 30 years. He said all of his fellow board members are SSPX-associated. The entire city commission is made up of SSPX members, including Francis Awerkamp, who also represents the area in the state House. His family’s business, the Onyx Collection, is a prominent employer in St. Marys. Awerkamp did not respond to Kansas Reflector inquiries made through phone and email.

The town’s non-SSPX residents were alarmed in recent years over the shutdown of the community’s golf course and swimming pool. Residents said SSPX members were concerned about immodest swimsuits and golf skirts and people of different genders interacting.

Lack of modesty was a factor in the closures, Moser acknowledged, but so were the costs to maintain and repair the pool, which opened in the 1920s.

With deterioration and no “feasible option for a lasting repair,” according to city commission documents, the commission permanently closed the pool in 2021.

Sexual abuse investigations

When the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in 2023 released its four-year inquiry into accusations of child sexual abuse in four Catholic dioceses and SSPX, KBI officials said they were still looking into criminal allegations of sexual abuse by clergy members associated with SSPX.

KBI spokeswoman Melissa Underwood said the agency is still investigating “allegations against SSPX.”

Theresa Goodman, a Kansas City resident, grew up in the SSPX St. Marys community after her family, drawn by the promise of a burgeoning religious culture, moved from San Antonio in the 1980s. Her father worked as a maintenance man for SSPX at the time.

Goodman remembers telling a priest during confession when she was 9 that a family member sexually abused her. The priest told her to say extra Hail Marys, she said.

She wants to share her story to help others come forward.

“It’s something that happened to me. It’s not who I am. Releasing that trauma really means to just release it,” Goodman said. “Where you have extreme religious ideology, you’re going to definitely have these predators, for sure.”

Goodman also said she had concerns about her brother, Michael Gonzalez, who died from suicide at the age of 25 in 2000. He had accused an SSPX priest of sexually abusing him as a boy, the Kansas Star reported.

Another woman who grew up in the community said her father would beat her and her siblings for watching a movie or reading a book not aligned with the religion, or for talking with a member of the opposite sex. He also sexually abused her, she said. Kansas Reflector doesn’t identify survivors of sexual or domestic violence without their consent, and she asked not to be named.

“I did go to confession, and I did tell them that I had performed sexual acts,” she said. “And not one of them asked me with who, who did it, and not one of them questioned, ‘Why is this child telling us they’re performing sexual acts on somebody?’ And as an adult now, I’m looking back and I’m actually dumbfounded that these grown men in a confessional would sit there and listen to this little child’s voice telling them something was happening and they didn’t do anything about it.”

Instead, she said, they told her to say penance, such as 10 Hail Marys or a novena.

Michelle McCormick, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, said deeply hierarchical structures can create the kind of isolation that enables predators, because their victims don’t have many options for seeking help.

The people in charge of these structures want to protect their values and beliefs from the “scary outside world,” McCormick said.

“I understand the motivation behind that, and even the comfort that that would give some folks,” she said. “But that also is the dynamic that perpetrators, those who cause harm, will try to capitalize on in order to create a lack of options for those that they’re victimizing in getting help.”

During a Sunday mass in June, Father Patrick Rutledge spoke of sexual violence.

He told the story of St. Maria Goretti, the patron saint of rape victims. In 1902, the 11-year-old girl was killed by her older neighbor who stabbed her 14 times after attempting to rape her. She forgave her murderer, Alessandro Serenelli, on her deathbed and said she wanted to see him in heaven. Serenelli went to jail for 27 years, where he repented after he dreamed of her, according to popular accounts of her canonization.

“In heaven, no doubt, there will be those who have not sullied grievously their baptismal innocence,” Rutledge says. “But most likely, more abundantly shall we say, hopefully we will be surrounded by those who have sullied their baptismal innocence, but have repented for their sins, even public ones, and through confession have become victorious through the blood of the lamb.”

https://kansasreflector.com/2024/07/11/in-this-kansas-town-an-insular-catholic-sect-leaves-some-residents-feeling-left-out/

Archdiocese in Mexico warns against attending SSPX Mass in newly built church

David Ramos
CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY (CNA)
May 19, 2023

With the construction of a new church called “Our Lady of All the Angels,” the Archdiocese of Puebla in Mexico warned the faithful about the Lefebvrist “schismatic movement” of the Fraternity of St. Pius X, stressing that the sacraments their priests administer “are illicit.”

In a statement released May 12, the archdiocese stated that the church, located near the San Pedro Cholula district, “has been built on behalf of the so-called ‘Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X’ (FSSPX), founded by the schismatic bishop Marcel Lefebvre.”

“Since neither the Fraternity of St. Pius X nor the building erected by them obediently submit to the Holy Father’s provisions, much less to the authority of the archbishop, the faithful are asked to go for their spiritual care to their respective parish, where the sacraments are administered licitly and validly, in full communion with the Church and in obedience to the pope and our archbishop,” the statement says.

The Archdiocese of Puebla is headed by Archbishop Víctor Sánchez Espinosa, who is also president of the Episcopal Commission for Liturgical Pastoral Care of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference.

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who died in a state of excommunication in 1991 for consecrating four bishops without the approval of Pope John Paul II, was a Roman Catholic archbishop who founded the FSSPX in 1970.

For Lefebvre, the FSSPX was a response to what he considered errors infiltrating the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. Members of this movement are commonly called “Lefebvrists.”

Within the context of the talks held between the Vatican and the Lefebvrists, in 2009 Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the four bishops ordained by Lefebvre in 1988: Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson, and Alfonso de Galarreta.

Despite the Holy See’s efforts at dialogue, and given the refusal of the FSSPX to recognize ecclesial documents, especially from the Second Vatican Council, the Lefebvrists do not have a recognized status in the Catholic Church.

In its statement dated May 12, the Archdiocese of Puebla stressed that “the sacraments administered by the ministers of the Fraternity of St. Pius X are illicit” and explained that this is because “they are not celebrated in full ecclesial communion.”

In addition, the archdiocese noted “they are administered by acephalous priests, that is, they are not under ecclesiastical authority. They do not obey the pope. They do not belong to any diocese or congregation and do not have ministerial licenses issued by the Archdiocese of Puebla.”

Thirdly, the archdiocese warned that “those who have joined this schismatic movement can receive the penalty established for those who commit schism.”

“In short, by illicitly celebrating the sacraments, they tear apart the unity of the holy Catholic Church,” the archdiocese noted.

Regarding the Lefebvrists’ church, the Mexican archdiocese noted that “a church cannot be built without the express consent of the diocesan bishop, given in writing, and said church does not have that permission.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.



Graduated in Communication Sciences from the Universidad Privada del Norte in Trujillo, Peru. I have been part of the ACI Prensa team for more than 10 years. I have covered Pope Francis' trips to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. I covered the beatification ceremony of today's Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero in San Salvador, El Salvador, in 2015. Special envoy for investigation in Honduras in 2016. Head of the ACI Prensa Office in Mexico since 2018.



https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254357/archdiocese-in-mexico-warns-against-attending-sspx-mass-in-newly-built-church

What’s Behind the Fight Between Pope Francis and the Latin Mass Movement?

The discord has become a stand-in for conflicts over the decline in Catholics' participation in Mass, over the progressive orientation of Francis's pontificate, and over Vatican II itself.

Paul Elie
The New Yorker

April 9, 2023

 

On January 15, 2022, the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, celebrated Mass at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, at Mott and Prince Streets, in Manhattan. The cathedral, erected in 1815, is the predecessor to the present cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and it puts in mind the Catholicism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Irish, German, Italian, and Polish immigrants settled in great numbers in New York City. The Mass itself also called Catholic history to mind: it was the "Mass for the Americas," a work for choir and orchestra commissioned by Archbishop Cordileone and incorporating texts in English, Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl—the Indigenous language spoken by Juan Diego, whose visions of the Virgin Mary in Guadalupe, in 1531, figure into the foundation story of Catholicism in Mexico.

Cordileone, clean-shaven, wearing a white cassock edged with lace, offered the Eucharistic prayers in Latin while facing away from the congregation, as priests did prior to the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in 1965. In doing so, he took a stand in an unlikely pair of controversies. By facing the altar, he affirmed the prerogatives of a movement of Catholics devoted to the Latin Mass—a movement that has met resistance at the Vatican under Pope Francis. Cordileone, who was unvaccinated and did not wear a mask, was also defying a covid-19 city ordinance compelling venues hosting public gatherings to require masks or proof of vaccination.

Since then, the controversies have hardened into direct conflict. The Traditional Latin Mass, long a source of sustenance for Catholics leery of the reforms of Vatican II, is now a focal point for Catholics who disdain Pope Francis. The death, in December, of Benedict XVI, the Pope emeritus, left Catholic traditionalists without a champion in Rome. Benedict's views on the Mass were complex, but his preference for Baroque vestments (red slippers, a gold-threaded cope) had made him a figurehead for old-school Catholicism; his long efforts to close a breach between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X—a cadre of Latin-reciting priests whose leaders were excommunicated in 1988—had emboldened the T.L.M. movement, and a directive he issued in 2007 had quickened the movement's spread. Then, in early February, the publication of a leaked report from an F.B.I. branch office declaring that Latin Mass enclaves in Virginia harbored antisemites and members of the "far-right white nationalist movement" led traditionalists to claim that a religion-averse deep state was targeting them, and the Bureau's retraction of the report soon afterward (it did "not meet the exacting standards of the F.B.I.," the Bureau said in a statement) only sharpened their sense of themselves as a persecuted minority.

Above all, a pair of terse "instructions" issued by Francis have stirred opposition. In July, 2021, the Pope required priests who wish to celebrate the old Mass to seek permission from their bishops, compelled the bishops to get clearance from the Vatican (which Benedict's directive did not do), and forbade bishops to authorize the founding of Latin Mass groups in individual dioceses, which would serve to build up the movement as an alternative form of weekly worship. In February, he reiterated that position. The instructions were meant to tamp down the T.L.M. movement lest it deepen, as Francis put it, "the peril of division" in the Church. But, by requiring a bishop's permission, they gave fresh authority to the bishops who cherish T.L.M.—such as Cordileone and Michael F. Burbidge, in Arlington, Virginia—and prompted Latin Mass enthusiasts to decry a Vatican crackdown on true believers. They also undermined the image of Francis as a "pastoral" Pope who urges Catholics to go "to the margins" and uses a personal touch to bridge the gaps between doctrine and practice, and they drew the expressly forward-looking Pope deeper into a sustained conflict about the status of the Catholic past.

On the surface, it's hard to see what all the fuss is about. Latin Mass adherents are a tiny minority of practicing Catholics, and most Church traditionalists—bishops, priests, and laypeople alike—are content to take part in Masses offered in the language they speak in everyday life. (In the Archdiocese of New York, Mass is offered in more than a dozen languages.) But the T.L.M. conflict has become a stand-in for other conflicts: over the decline in Catholics' participation in Mass and the quality of the liturgy; over the outward-facing, progressive orientation of Francis's pontificate; and over Vatican II itself, which traditionalists see not as a thoroughgoing reform but as something between a modest course correction and a betrayal of the Church's patrimony.

For many centuries, especially after the Council of Trent concluded in 1563, the Latin Mass, celebrated according to strict rubrics under the supervision of Rome, was the main thing that all Catholics had in common, and a sign of their difference in the eyes of the wider world. During the suppression of Roman Catholicism under Queen Elizabeth I, Jesuits in England celebrated Latin Mass in secret—and some who were caught were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Charles Dickens, in "Pictures from Italy," describes arriving in Modena on a Sunday in 1844 and stepping "into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was performing, feeble tapers were burning, people were kneeling in all directions before all manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning the usual chant, in the usual low, dull, drawling, melancholy tone." In Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter," Henry Scobie, at Mass with his wife while carrying on an affair with a younger woman, wonders whether he is damned: "Hoc est enim Corpus: the bell rang, and Father Rank raised God in his fingers—this God as light now as a wafer whose coming lay on Scobie's heart as heavily as lead." In "The Godfather," the grisly murders of various dons are intercut with scenes from a baptism during a Latin Mass. The lyrics that Bono sang in U2's breakthrough video "Gloria"—"Gloria, in te domine / Gloria, exultate"—echo the Latin Mass, and countless other baby-boom Catholics have characterized regular immersion in the old Latin rite as the formative experience of their childhood. "Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo," Anna Quindlen wrote in the Times, in 1986. "These are my bona fides: a word, a phrase, a sentence in a language no one speaks anymore."

By then, the Latin Mass was twenty years out of use. The vast renewal of Catholic life and practice brought about through the Second Vatican Council began with the reform of the liturgy, building on several decades of efforts inspired by historical research or trends in the arts. Moving the altar away from the far wall; turning the priest to face the people; shifting the proceedings from Latin to the vernacular (a Latinate word for the everyday language of a people or region); enjoining people to recite the prayers themselves, rather than just listen to the priest murmur Latin words they barely understood—all these reforms were meant to elicit a "full and active participation" in the liturgy. The new approach began to be instituted in 1965. Plenty of people complained. A 1969 papal document—with the Latin title "Novus Ordo"—reaffirmed the changes. A sense of grievance became a sense of loss, which Garry Wills described in his book "Bare Ruined Choirs" (1972): "Even the Mass, the central and most stable shared act of the church, had become unrecognizable to many—a thing of guitars instead of the organ, of English instead of Latin, of youth-culture fads instead of ancient rites." The essayist Richard Rodriguez, a decade later, observed: "No longer is the congregation moved to a contemplation of the timeless. Rather, it is the idiomatic one hears. One's focus is upon this place. This time. The moment. Now."

Yet the new center held. The folk-Mass trend subsided. Tasteful, historically evocative vernacular Masses emerged, some flecked with Latin here and there. Pope John Paul II, who was deeply traditional in matters of doctrine and morality, led open-air Masses that were profoundly nontraditional: huge crowds, people waving banners and snapping photos, the Pope sporting regional garb (a headdress in Mexico, a staff and shield in Kenya) and reading from scripts in local languages. Two generations of Catholics came of age with no memory of the old ways. The ads in the Saturday Times announcing "Traditional Latin Masses" at a chapel on Long Island seemed like postings of a secret society.

In a way, they were, but the T.L.M. movement grew and came in from the cold, stimulated by forces akin to those which had led to the doing away of it in the first place. Some Catholics found the no-longer-new vernacular Mass rote and dispiriting. The thirty-five-year run of John Paul and Benedict tilted the clergy rightward, and many of the most ardent Catholics in those years were the most traditional ones, who sought out the Latin Mass for the qualities celebrated in literature, music, and art, as well as in the vast corpus of Catholic thought prior to 1965.

It was no surprise that many such people would be conservative politically or that they would see the government as hostile to religion—a tendency heightened during the pandemic, when New York and other states imposed stricter restrictions on gatherings at churches than in supermarkets or restaurants. Nor was it a surprise that the archbishop most prominent in the effort for liturgical restoration, Cordileone, was the one who tangled most visibly with a progressive Catholic politician, telling Nancy Pelosi, whose congressional district includes San Francisco, that he would withhold Communion from her at any Mass where he was presiding because of her support for legal abortion. Six months after celebrating the Mass of the Americas, in Manhattan, Cordileone led a simplified "parish version" at the Meritage Resort and Spa, in California's Napa Valley, during the summer conference of the Napa Institute—a deep-pocketed traditionalist advocacy group that has sponsored and funded a range of T.L.M. initiatives alongside its own efforts to build Catholic support for an unregulated free-market economy and to reshape the Supreme Court along traditionalist Catholic lines.

And the T.L.M. movement's association with antisemitism is not completely a figment of an F.B.I. field officer's imagination: shortly after Pope Benedict welcomed the schismatic Society of St. Pius X back into the Catholic fold in January, 2009, an interview from a few days earlier surfaced, in which its leader, Bishop Richard Williamson, denied the reality of the Holocaust. "I believe there were no gas chambers," he said. (The Vatican suspended him from priestly duties, and he was later ousted from the Society.) The broader movement is clearly distinct from the S.S.P.X., but Pope Francis is not wrong to see the movement, even at its most benign, as a challenge to Catholic unity in general and to his pontificate in particular. And yet it's also true that a range of dynamic movements within Catholicism—for gay rights, for women's ordination, for more open church governance—could be seen by some as threats to the unity of the Church. That's not a sound reason to suppress them, and, more than those movements, the T.L.M. has a definite precedent in past Catholic practices.

What, then, should Francis do about it? His three-day stay in the hospital prior to Holy Week (he had bronchitis, a spokesman said) served to focus public attention on the limitations imposed by his age—he is eighty-six—and his precarious health. La Croix's Vatican correspondent, Robert Mickens, mused that "perhaps it is time for him to start expending his energy more strategically." In the past year, Francis has deepened ties with Muslim leaders, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the government of China, among other entities. Now he could seek rapprochement with the T.L.M. movement, reaching out to traditionalists in the Church he leads.

There's no need for Francis to make a journey or appoint a commission; he could do it right from his desk. In his role as the bishop of Rome, he could authorize a Latin Mass celebrated by a bishop who shares his outlook—say, Cardinal Arthur Roche, who leads the dicastery that oversees liturgical matters—thus decoupling the T.L.M. movement from the opposition to his pontificate. He could make sure the T.L.M. gets some attention at the synod in Rome this October, which is meant to be a space for dialogue among Church leaders. Or he could do the kind of things he has done to affirm the value of other movements—invite a Latin-loving bishop for a photo op at his desk, or make a vague but appreciative remark in an interview. At the moment, the T.L.M. movement is still on the margins of the Church; to keep it there, paradoxically, Francis has to go to the margins and engage with it personally. ♦

 

 

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/whats-behind-the-fight-between-pope-francis-and-the-latin-mass-movement

10 people who say they were in a cult - and how they got the courage to leave

Janaki Jitchotvisut
INSIDER
September 19, 2018

Many people think of cults as strictly religious, but that's not always the case. And though most people don't want to believe it, given the right circumstances, it can be easy to fall prey to a cult.

Still, there's hope — and here are 10 stories of people who say they successfully escaped from a cult.

Maude Julien wrote a memoir about how her father created a "three-person family cult."

In 1936, Louis Didier, a 34-year-old businessman in northern France, convinced a poor couple to let him take in their 6-year-old daughter named Jeannine. By 1957, Didier had married Jeannine and he decided they were to have a child together. They had a girl they named Maude Julien.

Julien describes how her father attempted to make her into a "superhuman" child. In the time between the first and second World Wars, he would experiment on her. Around the age of 6, he would ply her with whiskey and then command her to do complicated tasks. He also regularly made her hold onto electric fences with her hands or kept her in a basement in the darkness with bells on her sweater so he would know if she moved.

He also reasoned that since musicians survived concentration camps, his daughter needed to learn as many musical instruments as possible. That's eventually how she escaped; a music tutor convinced her father to send the formerly homeschooled Maude away to "a harsh school" to continue her music training.

Today, Julien is 60 years old and is a psychotherapist. She went on to write a memoir about her experiences titled "The Only Girl in the World."

The entire Phoenix family of actors — River, Joaquin, Rain, Liberty, and Summer — spent part of their childhoods as members of The Children of God.

In 2014, Joaquin Phoenix sat down for an interview with Playboy and talked about growing up in The Children of God.

"My parents had a religious experience and felt strongly about it. They wanted to share that with other people who wanted to talk about their experience with religion," he said. "These friends were like, 'Oh, we believe in Jesus as well.' I think my parents thought they'd found a community that shared their ideals."

But according to Phoenix, that wasn't the case and the group was actually a cult.

"Cults rarely advertise themselves as such," he continued. "It's usually someone saying, 'We're like-minded people. This is a community,' but I think the moment my parents realized there was something more to it, they got out."

In reviewing a biography of the tragically short life of Joaquin's brother River Phoenix, LA Weekly wrote that Children of God "infamously encouraged both incest and adultery." The parents constantly preached the Children of God word to any who would listen in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela — while the Phoenix kids begged from locals since families in the cult were responsible for providing their own food.

The family eventually left. In Joaquin's interview with Playboy, he said that he could see the cult's beliefs and actions evolving in a disturbing way.

Rose McGowan also spent her childhood growing up as a member of The Children of God.

For the first nine years of her life, Rose McGowan says she and her family were a part of a Children of God branch in the beautiful Italian countryside. According to McGowan, her dad was a leader in the branch — not just a run-of-the-mill member.

The Children of God believed strongly in both an imminent apocalypse and also free love. McGowan told People that when the Children of God started heavily pushing the idea of child-adult sexual relations, her father left and took her with him.

McGowan talked to People magazine about her family's escape.

"My dad, Nat, Daisy and I escaped with my dad's other wife in the middle of the night," she said. "I remember running through a cornfield in thunder and lightning, holding my dad's hand and running as fast as I could to keep up with him … [The cult] sent people to find us. I remember a man trying to break in with a hammer."

Michael Young grew up as a member of The Family International, the name that The Children of God chose after it was rebranded.

The Children of God later rebranded and changed its name to the Family of Love, and later The Family International after it had been labeled a cult and was investigated by the FBI and Interpol.

Speaking to the Guardian, Michael Young — who was born in 1992 — recalled his experiences with the group being a street preacher as a child on the streets of Monterrey, Mexico.

Although Young told the Guardian that he himself was not sexually abused, he saw other children who were — especially young girls. He told the Guardian, "It definitely wasn't a safe place to grow up, especially if you were a girl. Close friends of mine growing up were abused and raped."

The Children of God founder David Berg died in 1994, but his widow Karen Zerby continued the group's mission. Under her guidance, in 2009, The Family International announced that the apocalypse was no longer imminent — and suggested that members might want to start thinking about the future.

In the Guardian piece, Young and other former members describe how hard it was the acclimate back to normal life and move on after leaving.

The Family International still exists today, but no longer encourages communal living — and as of 2017, counted around 2,500 members in total spread across 80 countries.

Anna LeBaron was one of over 50 children born to Ervil LeBaron — who was dubbed "the Mormon Manson" because he was accused of murdering dissenters.

Anna LeBaron wrote a book and gave numerous interviews about how she escaped from her fundamentalist father's cult at the age of 13.

Her father, Ervil LeBaron, was the leader of the Church of the Lamb of God, a fundamentalist offshoot of Mormonism that kept up the practice of polygamy after the main church abandoned it in 1890.

Over his lifetime, Anna's father would marry 13 women and father over 50 children. Anyone who challenged LeBaron was allegedly subject to the abandoned Mormon doctrine called "blood atonement" that said killing "sinners" could "cleanse them of evil." LeBaron's murder plots reportedly started with his older brother, Joel, and allegedly continued even after he went to prison in 1979.

By 1981, he had died while still in prison, but his followers were still killing in his name.

In 1988, the Four O'Clock Murders shocked America when family members were gunned down within minutes of each other on the same day, all allegedly on LeBaron's orders. Mark Chynoweth, who hadhelped Anna escape from the Church of the Lamb of God, was one of the victims.

Since then, Anna says the family is slowly healing and has moved beyond its dark past.

"I have five grown children and if me telling my story was to put me in any danger, or anybody that I loved and cared about, I would never have done this at all," she told the BBC. "I believe that is 100% in the past and there is no danger at all for me."

Author Rebecca Stott left the Exclusive Brethren in the UK with her family when she was 8 years old.

Rebecca Stott's family belonged to The Exclusive Brethren, which believed in the Rapture, extreme adherence to very strict rules, and as little mingling with the outside world as possible. Stott said women and girls were expected to be completely subservient, quiet, and keep their heads covered and hair long.

If followers failed to adhere to the rules, minister higher-ups would visit and interrogate them, and sometimes isolate them for extended periods of time, she said.

In 1970, a scandal rocked the Brethren when one of the cult's leaders — a 70-year-old man named Jim Taylor, Jr. — was found in bed with a 30-something younger woman in the group who was married to someone else. A group of around 8,000 Brethren worldwide splintered off from the main group — and Stott's parents and several other close relatives were part of that splinter faction.

Not long after, Stott's father decided that the family should enter the real world and disengage from the cult altogether. While they'd been part of the Brethren, Stott didn't watch TV, read newspapers, listen to secular music, or see movies — the entire family was largely out of touch with the culture of the time. Suddenly being thrust back into the world was a huge adjustment.

Stott wrote in an essay for Elle that she tells her children "to think for themselves, to ask questions and to stand up when they see something unfair."

Rachel Jeffs is the daughter of self-described "prophet" of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Church, Warren Jeffs. She left in 2015.

Rachel is one of Warren Jeffs' 53 children by 78 wives — at least one of whom was as young as 12 when she was forced into marriage.

Rachel says her father started sexually abusing her when she was 8 years old — and she told her mother about it when she was 10. After her mother confronted Warren Jeffs about it, he still kept it up, even forcing Rachel to look at pornography while out at bookstores, she said.

Her father may have believed in taking young girls as wives for himself — but he didn't marry Rachel off until she was 18.

"Right before I got married was when he started marrying 16-year-olds," she told A&E. "And he actually married one 15-year-old right before I got married. I knew it was wrong, I knew in my heart. I felt bad for these girls — they were my age, they're little girls. I remember thinking that it was gross, but I couldn't really do anything about it."

Warren Jeffs was convicted in 2011 for aggravated sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl and sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl that he claimed were both his "spiritual wives" and was sentenced to life plus 20 years in prison. Even so, he still controls the FLDS church.

It was after Warren punished Rachel by forcing her to live apart from her children for seven months that she finally left the church. The alleged crime: Warren accused Rachel of having had sex with her husband while she was pregnant.

Wallace Jeffs, the half-brother of Warren Jeffs, also left the FLDS.

After he saw his half-brother Warren — the self-proclaimed FLDS prophet and church leader — marry an 11-year-old girl, Wallace Jeffs says he knew he had to protect his children, he told Religion News Service.

He worked with the FBI to gather evidence against his half-brother and wanted to fight for custody of his children. Standard practice in the FLDS held that men could forfeit their plural wives and children to the church if they stepped out of line.

His family managed to all leave the FLDS after he did, according to the Religion News Service. Some of them don't currently talk to Wallace, but he says he's happy that they're at least free of the cult and rebuilding their lives.

Carli McConkey joined a group called Life Integration Programmes in 1996 that she says was a cult. She won a defamation suit brought forward by the group's leader in 2014.

While attending the Mind Body Spirit Festival in Sydney, Australia, after university graduation in 1996, Carli McConkey found herself drawn to a booth for Life Integration Programmes (LIP). The first seminar was free, but after that, she had to pay more and more if she wanted to continue taking these courses.

The group was lead by a woman named Natasha Lakaev, a registered psychologist, according to NRM Digital. Sleep deprivation, food deprivation, removal of personal identification documentation, siphoning of all personal finances to complete courses, isolation from friends and family members, and a constant barrage of carefully selected information were all methods the organization reportedly used to keep its followers in line.

In the late 1990s, LIP changed its name to Universal Knowledge. McConkey said she experienced physical abuse at the hands of Lakaev multiple times and was told to give more and more money.

McConkey finally left with her three children in 2009 and was able to reconnect with her parents. She has since written a self-published book about her experience as well as given interviews to the press. In 2014, McConkey and her ex-husband Michael Greene won the defamation case against them brought forward by Lakaev.

Claire Ashman says she survived two cults — starting from childhood indoctrination and later moving on to the Order of St. Charbel.

Claire Ashman grew up in a rural area of Victoria, Australia, in a very strict Catholic family who were members of the Society of St. Pius X — a sect that the Catholic Church does not currently recognize. When she was 15, a 27-year-old family friend named Tony started showing interest in her and the two later married.

It was Tony who became interested in the Order of St. Charbel, according to Claire, and she says despite her reservations, they joined.

The group was founded by William "Little Pebble" Kamm. He tried to get Claire to join the Royal House of David, which she said consisted of Kamm marrying 12 young virgins called "Queens" and 72 "Princesses" who could be married to other men but would bear him "mystical babies."

Kamm was later convicted and sent to prison after claiming that the Virgin Mary told him to repopulate the Earth with two 15-year-old girls, according to News.Com.Au. Kamm ended up serving nine years of a maximum 10-year sentence for his crimes and is believed to have fathered over 20 children, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Claire said she started to think about leaving after learning what a cult was from a book called "The Beautiful Side of Evil" by Johanna Michaelsen. In 2006, she left with her children. She now writes and gives presentations in hopes of helping others free themselves from cult indoctrination — as well as educating people about the signs to look forto keep those they love safe from cults.

https://www.thisisinsider.com/stories-of-people-who-say-they-left-cults-2018-8

 

Cult survivors come together to reveal stories of resilience: 'People can thrive after this'

Stephanie Nolasco
AP/Fox News
October 30, 2022

Lola Blanc and Meagan Elizabeth have teamed up for the podcast 'Trust Me,' which explores stories and cases involving extreme beliefs and manipulation

If you’ve ever had an experience with a cult, Lola Blanc and Meagan Elizabeth want to hear about it.

The women have teamed up to launch a podcast titled "Trust Me," which explores cases of "extreme belief and manipulation." They offer a telephone number so that listeners can either voicemail or text their personal accounts. The women also speak to survivors, experts, as well as "former and current believers." They’ve previously spoken to survivors of groups like NXIVM, Heaven’s Gate and the Children of God, among others.

Elizabeth told Fox News Digital she’s been stunned by the messages they’ve been receiving from callers.

"It’s one of the most interesting parts of what we’ve done," she explained. "We ended up using one of the stories as a complete episode because that person left us a message, and we just kept talking to them. And it’s crazy how different everyone’s story is, and yet they’re so similar. … I’m constantly struck by how many people experience this and yet how strong and resilient they are. There’s been such a misconception about these kinds of people. But the truth is, the kinds of people who end up in cults are incredibly intelligent, curious, funny and super self-aware, just like anyone you would meet on the street."

JIM JONES’ SONS RECALL JONESTOWN MASSACRE, DESCRIBE CULT LEADER’S DRUG ADDICTION IN NEW DOC

 

"It can happen to anyone," she added.

And the topic hits close to home. Elizabeth said she was raised in a secret religious sect called the "Two By Twos" that is also referred to as "The Truth" or "The Way." Blanc said she and her mother fell prey to a self-proclaimed "prophet" from a Mormon offshoot group who manipulated them.

According to experts, there are thousands of cult groups. Psychologist Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer, author of "Cults in Our Midst," once estimated that a whopping 10 million to 20 million Americans have been involved to some degree with cult-like organizations in the last 20 years.

Elizabeth explained that while many associate these extreme groups with the ‘60s and ‘70s, recruits are being made online.

 

MANSON'S YOUNGEST FOLLOWER TELLS ALL, CLAIMS DENNIS WILSON TRIED TO 'MOLD' CULT LEADER INTO A ROCK STAR

 

"We have found that it’s so easy now with the internet," she said. "There are people out there who are getting a lot of money and loyalty from others in ways that aren’t healthy. … There’s just so much uneasiness in the world today that you want to look for answers. You want to look for different avenues where you don’t feel alone. But you need to be aware of the group’s intentions."

Blanc noted that the tell-tale signs have been consistent among the numerous listeners who have either called in or emailed them.

"It seems like consistently cult leaders isolate people from their loved ones and prevent them from having an identity outside the group," she said. "You also have that one who claims they know all the answers. You’ll have those that exploit their members financially but also psychologically and emotionally. You also start to lose your identity and sense of self outside the group. There seems to be no tolerance for questioning."

"The lack of individuality is so big within these groups," Elizabeth continued. "We shouldn’t all think the same things or do the same things. If you’re being asked to not be an individual, then you’re probably in a cult-like situation where somebody’s trying to control you. You shouldn’t find your sense of self in one person or one group. You shouldn’t rely on one person or one group to get all of your information in the world. And you shouldn’t rely on one person or one group to feel safe or right. You need more than one place to go for answers in your life."

FORMER NXIVM FOLLOWER RECALLS DATING LEADER KEITH RANIERE, MEETING 'SMALLVILLE' STAR ALLISON MACK

 

The women do revisit infamous cases to see how they occurred and the lessons that can be learned today. Jonestown, led by the Rev. Jim Jones, comes to mind. The mass murders and suicides of hundreds in an agriculture commune in Guyana still horrify decades after it occurred in 1978.

There’s also the Manson family, which has sparked numerous books, films and documentaries. Charles Manson, the hippie cult leader who masterminded the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others during the summer of 1969, passed away in 2017 after nearly a half-century in prison. The women, who interviewed a former Manson follower for "Trust Me," said they were struck by how "normal" she is.

 

"In terms of people who are willing to share their stories with us, it tends to be more women," said Blanc. "But I don’t believe it’s because more women get involved with cults. I think men join very different types of groups. We also found that women are more comfortable discussing what happened to them. But we’re learning that there’s a surprising amount of male survivors out there as well."

Elizabeth and Blanc said they’ve wanted to create a space where listeners can share their stories without judgment.

SON OF POLYGAMOUS CULT LEADER WARREN JEFFS SPEAKS OUT IN DOC: ‘WE WERE BRAINWASHED’

 

"We wanted people to find a place where they could feel less alone," said Blanc. "It was really important for us to create a space where it’s humanized and normalized. I remember when I was looking for a podcast like this one, I couldn’t find anything. The ones I found were almost gawking at survivors. If you’ve been manipulated or abused in some way, you’re not broken. There’s nothing wrong with you. You were just manipulated by a bad person. And that’s one of the many things we wanted people to take from the show."

"We also wanted to show how resilient these listeners are," said Elizabeth. "When you’re first coming out of it, if it can feel like your life is over, and you’re never going to thrive again. We have found that’s not true. People can thrive after this."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Stephanie Nolasco covers entertainment at Foxnews.com.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/cult-survivors-come-together-reveal-stories-resilience-people-can-thrive

 

The Christian Withdrawal Experiment

Feeling out of step with the mores of contemporary life, members of a conservative-Catholic group have built a thriving community in rural Kansas. Could their flight from mainstream society be a harbinger for the nation?

Emma Green
The Atlantic
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020 ISSUE

Half an hour down the highway from Topeka, Kansas, not far from the geographic center of the United States, sits the town of St. Marys. Like many towns in the region, it is small, quiet, and conservative. Unlike many towns in the region, it is growing. As waves of young people have abandoned the Great Plains in search of economic opportunity, St. Marys has managed to attract families from across the nation. The newcomers have made the radical choice to uproot their lives in pursuit of an ideological sanctuary, a place where they can raise their children according to values no longer common in mainstream America.

St. Marys is home to a chapter of the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX. Named for the early-20th-century pope who railed against the forces of modernism, the international order of priests was formed in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church's attempt, in the 1960s, to meet the challenges of contemporary life. Though not fully recognized by the Vatican, the priests of SSPX see themselves as defenders of the true practices of Roman Catholicism, including the traditional Latin Mass, celebrated each day in St. Marys. Perfumed with incense and filled with majestic Latin hymns, the service has an air of formality and grandeur. To most American Catholics under the age of 50, it would be unrecognizable.

Throughout American history, religious groups have walled themselves off from the rhythms and mores of society. St. Marys isn't nearly as cut off from modern life as, say, the Amish communities that still abjure all modern technology, be it tractor or cellphone. Residents watch prestige television on Hulu and catch Sunday-afternoon football games; moms drive to Topeka to shop at Sam's Club. Yet hints of the town's utopian project are everywhere. On a recent afternoon, I visited the general store, where polite teens played bluegrass music beside rows of dried goods. Women in long, modest skirts loaded vans that had enough seats to accommodate eight or nine kids—unlike most American Catholics, SSPX members abide by the Vatican's prohibition on birth control. At housewarming parties and potluck dinners, children huddle around pianos for sing-alongs.

In their four decades in St. Marys, the followers of SSPX have more than doubled the town's size. Even with six Masses on Sundays, parishioners fill the Society's chapel to capacity; overflow services are held in the gym of the Society's academy, which inhabits an imposing campus built by the Jesuit missionaries who called St. Marys home in the 19th century. The school is constantly running out of classroom space. The parish rector, Father Patrick Rutledge, has to scramble each summer to accommodate rising enrollment. Real estate sells at price points closer to those of Kansas's big cities than of its other small towns.

Newcomers are attracted by the opportunity to live beside like-minded neighbors. But many are pushed here as much as they are pulled. When they lived in other places, many SSPX families felt isolated by their faith, keenly aware that their theological convictions were out of step with America's evolving cultural sensibilities and what they perceive as the growing liberalism of the Catholic Church, especially on issues such as gay marriage and abortion. They were wary of being labeled bigots by co-workers and even friends. They worried that their children would be exposed to sin: A friend's parents might let their kids watch violent television shows; teens might encounter pornography on a classmate's phone. "We can't keep things out that we'd like to keep out completely," Rutledge told me. But the environment in St. Marys is "as conducive as possible for children to save their souls."

In 2017, the conservative writer Rod Dreher published The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, in which he describes growing hostility to Christian values in the secular world. Dreher, a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, argues that sexual expression has become secular society's highest god. He laments that Christians have been pressured to accommodate and even celebrate LGBTQ identity. In the face of what Dreher calls the "barbarism" of contemporary American life, he believes the devout have no option but to flee—to build communities, churches, and even colleges where they will be free to live their values and pass the gospel on to the next generation.

Among the conservative-Christian intelligentsia, Dreher's book was explosive. Charles Chaput, the outgoing archbishop of Philadelphia and an influential figure in the Catholic Church, described it as "a tough, frank, and true assessment of contemporary American culture." The New York Times columnist David Brooks called it "the most discussed and most important religious book of the decade." The Benedict Option prompted a flurry of essays in evangelical magazines, panel discussions at Christian colleges, and at least one spin-off book from a young Dreher acolyte. Dreher himself continues to write about so-called Ben-Op communities springing up around the country, from Alaska to Texas to the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

When they lived elsewhere, many St. Marys residents felt isolated by their faith, keenly aware that their beliefs were out of step with America's evolving cultural sensibilities.



Dreher addressed his book to fellow conservative Christians, but in calling for a strategic retreat from society, he tapped into an impulse felt by a range of groups in America. In Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C., contemporary followers of Marcus Garvey, the 20th-century Pan-African activist and thinker, have built infrastructure designed to free black people from systemic oppression: community gardens to provide food in neighborhoods devoid of grocery stores, and Afrocentric schools that teach black pride. Young leftist Jews skeptical of assimilation have founded a number of Yiddish-speaking farms in upstate New York, in an effort to preserve their ethnic heritage as well as Judaism's agrarian tradition. Environmentalists have established sustainable settlements in rural Virginia, which serve as both utopian experiments in low-impact living and shelters for the climate disasters ahead.

These groups ostensibly have little in common, but they share a sense that living according to their beliefs while continuing to participate in mainstream American life is not possible. They have elected to undertake what might be termed cultural secession. Katherine Dugan, an assistant professor of religion at Springfield College, in Massachusetts, who studies Catholicism in the U.S., describes the desire for protected, set-apart communities as "a natural American response to not liking what the cultural context is."

In some ways, these groups are merely practicing an extreme form of the insularity many Americans have already embraced. Deep-blue enclaves such as Berkeley and brownstone Brooklyn are similarly homogenous, sought out by people with a certain set of values and hopes for their children. But the rise of more radical self-sorting poses a challenge to America's experiment in multicultural democracy, enshrined in the motto e pluribus unum—"Out of many, one." The dream of a diverse society is replaced with one in which different groups coexist, but mostly try to stay out of one another's way. The ongoing experiment in St. Marys suggests what might be gained by such a realignment—and what might be lost.

Michelle and francis snyder moved to St. Marys seven years ago, just as Barack Obama was about to win his second term as president. The high-school sweethearts had grown up attending SSPX chapels, and wanted to raise their children with a strong Catholic faith, but in the early years of their marriage they struggled to make this vision a reality. Moving from job to job around Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, Francis found it difficult to earn enough money to support the large family the couple wanted. To make ends meet, he worked construction jobs seven days a week, skipping Mass for months at a time. Michelle had made sandwiches at Panera after high school, but quit after she gave birth to their first child.

It was only after the couple moved to St. Marys that Michelle realized how lonely her life in New York had been. In St. Marys, few married women work, especially once they have children. Mothers trade strollers and bassinets and coordinate a constant supply of casseroles when a new baby arrives. Michelle relies on her neighbors for carpooling and in emergencies, trusting them implicitly. "We're all Catholic," she told me. "We're all raising our children to get to heaven." Francis now works for a manufacturing business that, like many of the companies in town, is owned by a fellow SSPX parishioner. He gets time off to attend Mass and observe holy days of obligation.

Michelle and Francis, now in their mid-30s, have six children, three born since they arrived in St. Marys. They are raising their daughters—11-year-old Anna, 5-year-old Lucy, and an infant, Evelyn—to follow in Michelle's path. If they aren't going to become nuns, she said, the girls should be preparing to become wives and mothers. "I would not mind if they went for a career, but once they got married, I would encourage them to focus on their family," she said as she nursed Evelyn in the family's light-filled living room. "We're having children and raising them and educating them. And in the Catholic faith, that's priority."

That education takes place at St. Mary's Academy. (The town spells its name with no apostrophe; the academy uses the possessive form.) Students are strictly separated by gender. Little girls wear Mary Janes and jumpers to class on the upper part of campus. The boys, in crew cuts and ties, learn in the buildings of the lower campus. Female students can compete in intramural sports, such as volleyball and archery, but only against other girls. The boys compete against sports teams in the area, although the school attracted controversy in 2008 for forfeiting a basketball game when a woman showed up to referee. ("Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference," SSPX said in a statement at the time, "we cannot place them in an aggressive athletic competition where they are forced to play inhibited by their concern about running into a female referee.")

In the classroom, students are instructed in the Catechism. Latin is the only foreign language offered, and teachers favor blackboards over computers. A classical education, the school believes, is the foundation of students' Catholic future. The day I visited, I watched ninth-grade girls discuss G. K. Chesterton and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Newcomers find st. marys appealing precisely because it is built around uncompromising theological principles and shared social values. But for those who aren't affiliated with the Society, the town has become a less welcoming place since SSPX arrived.

As the SSPX community in St. Marys has grown, parishioners have come to dominate the town's civic life. Francis Awerkamp is an SSPX parishioner who serves in local and state government and is a co-owner of the business where Francis Snyder works. He told me it makes sense that Society parishioners hold the mayoralty and every seat on the city commission, since members of SSPX make up the majority of the town's population. Most of the matters that commissioners deal with are crushingly mundane, he said: installing a new drainage ditch, or rezoning the golf course. "Government has a certain role in a community. And that role, in St. Marys, mainly revolves around infrastructure," he said. "Is there stuff that gets into religion? No."

Doyle Pearl tells the story differently. A longtime St. Marys resident, Pearl is the last "townie"—as non-SSPXers have taken to calling themselves—to have served as a commissioner. In the early days, he said, Society parishioners disapproved of the town swimming pool, the first concrete-bottomed pool in Kansas and a source of pride for old-timers. Society members were worried about seeing girls in skimpy bathing suits; their kids would try to swim in jeans, which left behind fibers that taxed the pool's filtration system. Later, Society members on the city commission pulled funding from a chamber-of-commerce event, citing concerns about an allegedly ribald country-and-western band. While the local economy has grown, the chamber has shrunk.

SSPX's insularity, and the order's controversial history, have bred suspicion in town. Among the post–Vatican II changes the Society rejects is the Church's declaration regarding its relationship with non-Christian religions, including a passage repudiating the long-held belief that Jews are responsible for the death of Christ. In 1989, a Nazi collaborator convicted of committing war crimes in Vichy France was caught hiding out at an SSPX monastery in Nice. Two decades later, Richard Williamson, a former SSPX bishop, gave an interview denying that the Nazis had used gas chambers and claiming that no more than 200,000 to 300,000 Jews had died in the Holocaust. (During my visit to St. Mary's Academy, I noticed a photograph hanging in the school's main administrative building in which Williamson is a central figure.) For years, townies whispered about alleged weapons stashes in the steam tunnels beneath the academy. When I asked Rutledge about this, he laughed. To his knowledge, he said, no weapons are now or have ever been stored on campus.

Pearl and his wife, Laura, are pleased that their hometown has a growing population and a lively Main Street. Doyle told me he even feels "a little envious" of the Society's vibrant church life and constant baptisms. "Their children continue their religion," he said. "They seem to follow the values that their parents have." But the town barely resembles the place where the Pearls grew up. Its bright future doesn't necessarily feel like their future.

Townies look wistfully to Wamego, a small city just down Highway 24 that has established itself as Kansas's hub for Wizard of Oz tourism. "They'll have the Tulip Festival. They'll have Octoberfest. They have a Fourth of July that, I think, is the biggest fireworks in Kansas now," Doyle said. "People sometimes say, 'Well, they're doing it. Why aren't we?' " Laura supplied the answer: "Because we don't have a community."

For the snyders, and many other recent arrivals, moving to St. Marys has liberated them to practice devout beliefs without apology. But what feels like freedom to some can feel like a prison to others. While parents may choose SSPX for their children, those children don't always want to live according to its moral strictures. And the Society spares little room for dissent.

Tiffany Joy-Egly moved from Tulsa to St. Marys with her parents and two sisters in 1979, when she was 6 years old. Tiffany grew up immersed in the SSPX world: learning about the dangers of rock music, skipping adolescent experiments with makeup, avoiding any behavior that might tempt men into sin. But Tiffany was possessed of a skeptical mind. "I would question in religion class," she told me at a Starbucks in Topeka, where she works as an emergency-room nurse and lives with her husband and two daughters. "If God gave us a brain, how come we can't use birth control? Because that makes more sense than having 12 kids that you can't afford to feed." This attitude was not welcome at the academy. "I was in detention a lot," she said.

Her siblings, too, chafed at the constraints of life in St. Marys. One sister got engaged to a Catholic man who attended Mass at Immaculate Conception, the townie church. According to Tiffany, the SSPX priest announced from the pulpit that anyone who attended the wedding would be committing a sin.

What the Society has built in St. Marys is more like a haven for those retreating from the culture wars than a training ground for battle.



Tiffany herself started using drugs and alcohol, but later resolved to return to the SSPX fold. She went to confession and delivered a litany of her sins, but the priest stopped her when she shared that a friend had recently had an abortion. This, the priest said, was unforgivable. While Tiffany herself had not terminated a pregnancy, she had failed to stop another woman from doing so. The priest declared that she would be excommunicated. (With proper penance, SSPX officials said, she could be reconciled with the Church.)

St. Marys "is a little, safe community," Tiffany told me. People go there to escape "a world that is considered unsafe." When she started building a life for herself outside St. Marys, however, she experienced less fear than relief. Small things like going to the mall and wearing shorts were revelatory; she finally felt she had choices about how to pray and when to get married. In St. Marys, that hadn't been possible. "You give up everything to come into this community," she said, "and do what you're told."

At a time when American politics is so fractured and dysfunctional, the idea of huddling among our own holds undeniable appeal. SSPX parishioners believe they know God's way and try to follow it, largely unencumbered by those who do not share their views. But there is peril in the premise that we would all be better off living among our own. Democracy depends on the friction that comes from encounters with difference. The movements for abolition, enfranchisement, labor dignity, and civil rights all stemmed from factions of Americans demanding rights and basic respect from their neighbors. If the country's most fervent believers, whether Catholics, evangelical Christians, civil-rights advocates, or environmentalists, were to simply give up their visions for a better nation, the American project would stagnate.

On the eastern side of the St. Mary's campus, the stone entrance is guarded by twin knights representing the school's mascot, the Crusaders. The SSPX bookstore is filled with toy soldiers and warring knights from Catholic history—the perfect gift, a salesman told me, for a little boy's First Communion.

But as much as SSPX may still think of itself as raising children to be warriors in the faith, the metaphor is no longer a good fit. What the Society has built in St. Marys is more like a haven for those retreating from the culture wars than a training ground for battle. Safe behind its walls, parishioners can seem uninterested in the moral failings of the outside world and untroubled by the country's political turmoil. "There's a lot to do," Paul-Isaac Franks, a priest and a music teacher at the academy, told me. "I don't have a daily ritual of reading the news." Jim Vogel, the editor of Angelus Press, which publishes SSPX literature, says that people in St. Marys are engaged in local politics, but "we can't really do much about what's happening in Washington." Here, at least, parishioners can be confident that the tradition and truth they crave can be preserved.

In a field high above the academy's campus, the Society is planning to construct a new church called the Immaculata, named for the old Jesuit church that burned down decades ago. For now, the space is marked only by metal rods sticking out of the overgrown grass, but once it's built, the church will seat 1,550 and stand 12 stories high. Father Rutledge hopes the Immaculata will be visible from the road for miles around, a beacon on the Plains calling to those in search of refuge.


This article appears in the January/February 2020 print edition with the headline "Retreat, Christian Soldiers."EMMA GREEN is a staff writer at ​The Atlantic, where she covers politics, policy, and religion.





https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/retreat-christian-soldiers/603043/