August 7, 2022

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We will begin our new School Year on August 17.  We currently have 85 students registered in our Pre School and 521 students registered in our K through 8 School.  This is the largest number of students we have registered for the last 10 years.

Our Parish has been working with St John Vianney in light of our Archdiocese Pastoral Planning that involves St John Vianney and  Mary Our Queen sharing a Pastor and an Associate with both sites being utilized for the ministerial needs of the two faith communities.  With the declining numbers in Mass attendance, the decline in population in the rural counties and the growth in a few concentrated counties as well as taking into account the declining priests’ numbers, the Pastoral Plan will create a new vision for how we as a Church will flourish in the future.

The second proposal in light of our Archdiocese Pastoral Planning is for our Parish to begin ministry for those who are Spanish speaking given the growth in Spanish-speaking parishioners in our area.  This will include having a Mass in Spanish on Sundays.

This year, we will be working with St John Vianney to do RCIA program together that will begin in the fall. St John Vianney graciously hosted our Totus Tuus program last week for the youth of our Parish. We are grateful for their hospitality and look forward to finding new ways to work together.

We continue to meet with leadership personnel of both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen Parishes to work out details of operations and the various needs each Parish.  The priests in both Parishes – Fr Richard Reiser (Pastor of St John Vianney), Fr Mario Rapose and myself have celebrated Masses in both Parishes so that we could introduce ourselves.  Both our offices have since gone through assessments that focuses on strengths and motivators of each staff so that our offices can be aligned.  The details of our Pastoral Planning will be sent to Archbishop Lucas in November for approval.  The date for the implementation of the Pastoral Planning process is July 1st, 2023.

With the resignation of our previous Religious Education Director, we took the time this summer to reevaluate our Religious Education Program in light of our Archdiocese Pastoral Planning that involves St John Vianney.  At this time, we have shelved our Family Faith Formation Program as few families have registered for this program. We will continue to have our traditional CCD program together with our Programs for Sacramental Preparation (First Confessions and Communion – 2nd Grade; and Confirmation – 7 & 8 Grades).  We will also continue to build up our Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Program that we started 2 years ago.  For the time being until we have finalized how our Religious Education Program needs are met with both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen, I have asked Fr Mario Rapose to fill in the role of our Religious Education Director.  Meanwhile, we have  since hired Hanna Casey as our Religious Education Secretary as well as our coordinator of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Program. Kindly contact Fr Mario or Hanna should you have any questions.

God’s Blessings,

Fr Marc