Stellar, the Queens 2023 Vacation Bible School starts a week from Monday. It’s going to be ‘out of this world!’ Literally!  This year it’s an outer space theme.  July 10 – 14, we welcome you to bring us your pre-school through 6th grade children for a week of faith-filled fun and adventure.

9am – 12:15pm each day, the children will sing, pray, play and learn about how we can all shine Jesus’ light in a darkened world. 

Look for the STELLAR/VBS’23 display by the elevator after Mass this weekend and get your kids and grandkids registered.  There are discounts still:  Thru Wednesday July 5th, $15 per child and a family cap of $45. What does that mean?  You have 6 kids?  Send them all and only pay for three!

Starting July 6th and at the door, it is $20 per child and no family would pay more than $60 to register three or more children.   

Vacation Bible School is the highlight of the summer and your kids won’t want to miss it!  

Because of the window project in the school, Vacation Bible School is being moved into Vincentian Hall and over to the parish offices.  This will require some changes to our schedule and some flexibility.

From July 10-14 ONLY, the Parish Office will open from 12:30pm – 4:30pm daily.  Do not come in the morning. The office will be closed and the parking lot will be blocked off.  

The week of July 10-14, there are also changes to the daily Mass schedule.  The Monday July 10 Mass and Friday July 14 Mass will be at 6:45am, not 9am.  The other masses remain at their regularly scheduled times.  This allows us to clear the parking lot for the VBS kids to be dropped off.

Speaking of the parking lot, the lot will be closed from 8:30-12:30 each day of VBS, with the exception of drop off and pick up of VBS students.  Those keeping hours in the chapel or for Open Doors are kindly asked to park on the street during that time.  

This will also affect funerals.  Vincentian Hall is already being set up to be STELLAR/VBS’23 Launch Command.  It will not be available for a funeral luncheon until the week of July 18th.  Any funerals that are booked during Bible School July 10-14 will be delayed into the afternoon to allow the children to clear out.  

I am sure everyone will cooperate and all will go well.  It’s for the children!

Join us on Independence Day Tuesday July, 2023 at 9am for a special Mass to celebrate the 247th Birthday of the United States of America.  Our country needs prayer like never before.  Please come join us and let us all pledge ourselves anew that we are, as ever, One Nation Under God.  

Not a week goes by when someone doesn’t let me know they’ve received an email or text claiming to be from me or a member of my staff.  In some, it asks for a favor.  In others, it’s about pictures they want you to click on.  I apologize for the stress and distress this causes.  I have been in contact with our technology team and those who maintain our computers and data and they assure me this is not a breach or a hack.  I am told all someone needs is access to a parish directory picture book. They can then use the internet to find people’s contact info and pretend to be the pastor or parish staff to see if they can engage you and then get you to do something that will benefit them monetarily.  

I can’t say this enough.  Look carefully.  Think carefully.  If you get a text from me: do you have my number?  Do I have yours?  Is it even a 517 area code?  The message could be vague, be using broken English or have poor spelling or punctuation.  Be suspicious.

If I email you or if you receive an email from a member of our staff, it should come from a queenschurch.com address and have the logo of the Blessed Mother at the bottom of it that you see at the top of this e-mail.  The emails people are showing me that our staff is supposedly sending out have .ee, .ph, .edu suffixes among others – not queenschurch.com.  Don’t open them, don’t read them, open no links, respond to nothing.  You might choose to forward it to me before you click delete.  

If I have a favor to ask of you, I would be up front and specific about it in my official contact instead of trying to bait you to get ahold to me in order to find out what I want.  Any message suggesting ‘I need a favor’ without specificity should be ignored and deleted.  

Here are some helpful articles that explain what these scammers are doing any why the soft targets of church communities are so favored by them:

I like it when I see kids and families from the neighborhood using our Queens basketball hoops and playground equipment.  I do not like it when people are skateboarding down the steps or railings at church.  A new problem has arisen this summer – unaccompanied minors in church.

On Saturday June 17, between a funeral and the 5pm Mass, 3 boys aged 9-12 spent four hours in the church.  They were up to no good, and we have it all on surveillance tape.  When I came out of the confessional and confronted them, they lied to me about what they were doing.  They have not stayed away and have been back since.  I do not know their names or where they live and I do not believe they are members here. 

I am going to need everyone’s help.  As of now, there can be no unaccompanied minors in the church without prior authorization.  If you are in the church building and see children without their parents or an adult present, I am asking you to explain to them they have to leave and come back with a parent, grandparent or guardian.     

On June 10, I sent out a parish email called ‘June is the month of the Sacred Heart.’  In that email I wrote about how the month of June has been co-opted as Pride month.  If you did not see or read that message, I encourage you to go back in your email inbox, search for it and look at it.  There were many articles and links to resources there that perfectly explain the church’s teaching about transgenders and transsexuals, issues we used to rarely hear about and now you can’t go a day without hearing something about what is happening in schools, locker rooms and on social media.  I especially encourage you to go back to that June 10 message to watch the documentary I included a link for called ‘What is a Woman?’

In addition to those resources, I also want to provide you the link to the Vatican’s own statement on this subject.  From 2019, here is ‘Male and Female He Created Them’ from the Vatican Secretariat for Catholic Education:  

It remains to be seen how the Church will be impacted by the passing of HB4474 in the Michigan House of Representatives yesterday.  If passed by the state senate and signed into law, we could face some stiff consequences if we do not use people’s preferred pronouns, as such a choice would be deemed as ‘threatening words.’  I invite you all to get educated now, because things are getting increasingly difficult and we all need to know what we are facing. 

In the meantime, God is good and Jesus is Lord.  With courage, let us heed Jesus’ words from Matthew’s Gospel this Sunday:

Fr. Tim MacDonald

Pastor

Queen of the Miraculous Medal Catholic Church

606 S. Wisner St.  Jackson, Michigan 49203

(517) 783-2748  www.queenschurch.com

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