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Katrina and Catholic Social Teaching

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath have dealt an unspeakably cruel blow to the U.S. Gulf Coast and to hundreds of thousands of people of all ages, races, and economic strata who have resided and worked there for all or most of their lives.

But this is not the time to meditate on the meaning of human suffering or the mystery of life. This tragedy, although the product of nature, could have been substantially mitigated by adequate preparedness beforehand and an effective plan to deal with its aftermath.

In the face of the subsequent torrent of widespread and angry criticism, the Bush Administration's strategy became one of repeating, mantra-style, the line that it did not want to "play the blame game." Now is the time, it said, to address the problems created by the hurricane and the subsequent flooding and evacuation of New Orleans. The determination of what went wrong and who was responsible can wait until later.

And the whole point of the article:

A tax policy that favors the rich to such an excessive degree is contrary to the principle of distributive justice, which is a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching.

I'll give you a hint:
It's a renegade catholic theologian who is more likely to get lefty on you than affirm the divinity of Jesus.