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Our Lady Queen of Mercy Catholic Church
4421 Narrow Lane Road
Montgomery, AL 36116
(334) 288-2850 (office)
(334) 281-7884 (fax)
www.olqm.org
Our Lady Queen of Mercy Catholic Church is a wonderful, traditional Catholic parish where many good things are happening, including Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which recently celebrated its 11th anniversary, and a very good Catholic elementary school. This year in Adult Education our parish offered a course on Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body (monthly), the History of the Catholic Church (monthly) and an Adult Bible Study (weekly).
However, amid all this good, some problems persist. As of May of 2003, because of demographic changes in the city of Montgomery, a substantial number of Catholics had moved away from our parish, causing our parish and elementary school enrollment to shrink in size. Our parish had over 470 families on the roll in the early 1980's; in May 2003 it had fewer than 250. In the academic year 1997-98, we had 229 students in our elementary school (K-8); in May 2003 we had 138. That was a drop of almost 40% in five years. We knew we could not survive if that trend were to continue.
Through prayer, sacrifice and hard work, Our Lady Queen of Mercy is a much different place today. Under the patronage of the Mother of God, we reached out to fallen away Catholics, evangelized our area, even went door-to-door inviting our neighbors to a week of talks about the Catholic faith, and paid off our parish debt.
In the Fall of 2004, our 7 th and 8 th grades were transferred to a new Catholic Middle School in Montgomery. This was a blessing to the 7 th and 8 th graders as they really needed an environment more conducive to their level of maturity. It was also a blessing for our school as it made it a more homogeneous environment. But it was costly financially (as we lost more tuition than overhead), but it was a blessing to Catholic education in Montgomery.
In preparation for the loss of the upper grades, our parish rallied the troops and had a town-hall meeting. In that meeting the parish decided to make the Catholic education of the children of our parishioners part of the primary mission of our parish. To help alleviate the burden upon our young families who desired to give their children a good Catholic education, we committed to an aggressive tithing program, whereby we could make our school tuition-free for our parishioners. The criteria for qualification for the tuition-free education were discussed and determined. To qualify, a family would have to meet the following criteria: (1) membership in Our Lady Queen of Mercy Catholic Church for one year, (2) their children had to be enrolled in our school for one year, and (3) weekly attendance at Sunday Mass. This plan brought families back to the parish and established a relationship between the parish and school which has been a great blessing.
The increase in tithing is paying for the tuition of the parishioners who have qualified for the plan. But there are still many financial challenges which remain. Though we have some wonderful families who come from the Montgomery area, our school has a good number of non-Catholic families who are not able to afford the full tuition. The Church subsidizes those families to the best of our ability. Other constant sources of need are the school buildings, which are 40 years old and are showing their age.
That is where YOU can help! You may have heard of “sister parishes.” That is where there is a sharing of goods (both spiritual and temporal) between parishes. It involves a parish which is financially blessed assisting a parish which is less well off. Each of the parishes prays for each other and they share their spiritual goods. There can be visitations between the two parishes in an effort toward mutual understanding and the sharing in each other's lives in a tangible way.
This is the offer I make to the reader for this appeal… I invite you to make Our Lady Queen of Mercy Catholic Church your “virtual” sister parish. We are making the effort to reach out to a universal flock (not a single parish) and ask for assistance in bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church to the largely non-Catholic Southeastern portion of the United States (FYI - Alabama is 97% potentially Catholic!).
Your prayers and monetary gifts will help us to reach out by means of a Catholic education to non-Catholics who could not otherwise afford this luxury (while exposing them to the Catholic faith). Over the last two years, we have received numerous inquiries from children and adults who are interested in becoming Catholic. The free Catholic education may get their attention, but it is the truth of Catholic faith that gets their minds and hearts!
A little about our school
We have a delightful Catholic school. Our regular activities include weekly Mass on Fridays and Holy Days of Obligation; monthly Exposition and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, concluding with Benediction; a quarterly Penance Service; the use of the Faith & Life series textbooks in our religion classes, and prayer to begin and end each day. Annually, we have many spiritual activities such as the living rosary, living nativity and a Christmas musical. Last year one of the teachers had a newborn child who went back into the hospital with complications and immediately the whole school gathered together to pray the rosary. That is typical of the spirit of our school. I could go on and on… Educationally, we have a very good school also. We have a new computer room with 16 computers and a new science laboratory each of which is less than one year old. Our standard test scores are well above average and we offer a second language to our students (Spanish). Our parents are very involved and are tremendously helpful to the school in many ways.
We would welcome inquiries from anyone who is interested in our Church and/or School (you can use the form below). We would also welcome a visit for you.
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