Dallas church offers prayers for immigration reform

KHOU Houston ^ | September 8, 2013 | SHON GABLES

[Alex Murphy]

DALLAS — In the parking lot outside St. Patrick Catholic Church in Northeast Dallas, the Rev. Josef Vollmer-König greets his parishoners with hugs and good wishes.

"Have a good day; God bless you!" he said with a grin.

Rev. Vollmer-König is proud of his church's diversity. In fact, he challenges a visitor to name a country and says it is likely that one of his members will represent the location.

Senait Kalleb, from East Africa is proof of that.

"Its a very welcoming church", Kalleb said. "We have a lot of diversity here."

But she's not the only foreigner. So too is Vollmer-König, who is from Germany. His American citizenship is one reason why he held a special mass to support immigration reform on Sunday.

"We want everybody to live in protection and peace," the pastor said.

On Sunday morning, before a packed church, Vollmer-König gave a short homily and then participated in prayers seeking economic justice and political reform.

He said his decision to participate was motivated by teachings in the Bible, and the fact that many Catholics are immigrants.

[Salvation]

So were your great grand parents immigrants to the U. S.?

[Resolute Conservative]

No they were born here as were their grandparents, what’s your point?

[wardaddy]

I like traditional values church

Don’t care how many non whites it has

God can reach them fine wherever they choose to go

I will confess that aside from the fried chicken and banana pudding etc that those all day black churches down home are way too long for me

And all that shouting

As a southern Baptist I likely enjoy Greek church most when I venture out

First funeral I ever went to was a black man at a black church

He was our family man.....too much Dr Tichenors got him driving one nite....he taught me a lot.....wimmins hunting

I can still smell that duskiness he always had from hard living

44 years latery wife and I spoke about him at lunch today

[smvoice]

You have a gift for writing. Your post was very Southern and wonderful. But I’m sure you’ve been told this before.

Regards, smvoice

[smvoice]

I'll give you one line from a song your post immediately brought to mind

"Another dirty, dusty Delta day..."

[Salvation]

That all of us are immigrants in one form or another. My great grandfather came from Ireland.

[Resolute Conservative]

Legal immigrants who came here to assimilate and make the whole better not take away from it as leeches and try and make it like the area they fled.

[smvoice]

That is my prayer, too, Resolute. But I can tell you from where I stand, it’s not promising. I live in a small Texas town, population 2,000 strong. The illegal population makes the town about 10,000 weak and very needy. Our hospital cannot accommodate that kind of increase. And that’s just one area of concern. Schools are another desperate problem.

[Dutchboy88]

Hey, sorry. There are so many posters around here who promote such nonsense, I missed your subtlety. I’ll be more careful next time.

[Pelham]

"The writing was on the wall after LBJ opened the floodgate from the 3rd world countries and no subsequent president dared to reverse that trend."

and that is the salient point. And some, Dubya and Obama in particular, have chosen to throw gasoline on LBJ's fire.

[Pelham]

“That all of us are immigrants in one form or another. “

Gosh, where have we seen that self-serving line before? SPLC? Obama? Dubya?

In contrast to that Open Borders foolishness, many Americans are descendents of colonists.

Colonists who carved a country out of wilderness so that your ancestors would have someplace nice to immigrate to, and so that you could advocate transforming it into something else.

[wardaddy]

thank you