sorry for the typo in my previous post about the St. Mary's sect. I meant to say "perfidious jews", which basically means "faithless" (that's a mild definition of that word) It was part of the Catholic Easter mass until the 1960s, when it was removed by the council.

This isn't a story about the backwards ways of Kansas or the Mid-West. St. Mary's Kansas is a very particular place - as Joe says, they are part of an extremely conservative Catholic sect that was excommunicated by the Vatican. They and their founder, the late French Bishop Lefevre, reject the reforms mandated by Vatican II in the 1960s. This includes saying the mass in Latin, refusing to remove the words "the profidious jews" from the Easter mass, and many other reforms regarding gender, ordained people, religious freedom and justice.

I visited St. Mary's when working on a documentary on Vatican II for PBS. It is truly a cult-like town, and they live in a very closed society. They also have been reported to have militia ties, including a relationship with Terry Nichols just before the Oklahoma city bombing.

St. Mary's Kansas is an isolated example of a freakishly anachronistic and fearful society. Hardly representative of Kansas, or any part of the country, as a whole.