And this, from Rod Dreher:
I was thinking this morning talking to my family down in
is simply unimaginable. My family lives about 100 miles north of New Orleans, in a beautiful rural/small town area — and it is not only
Louisiana that there is a profound and perhaps unappreciated need for pastors and other Christian leaders in the state and region to shepherd
their flocks in a direct and engaged way in this time. Everybody’s attention is focused on direct and immediate aid and relief, but what is simultaneously happening across the region is social disruption that
overrun with refugees, it is overrun by New Orleanians with money, who are desperately trying to buy housing. I don’t blame these New
Orleanians, but there is tremendous anxiety among the locals over all
this. My parents’ neighbors sold their house yesterday for $100,000
more than they were asking for it; a moneyed New Orleanian paid it on
the spot so nobody else would get the house. That’s going on
everywhere. It’s starting to sink in with the locals that nothing for
them will ever be the same again. Understandably their desire to help
their storm-displaced neighbors in need is being compromised by their
fear of the future — what is going to happen to our little town? —
and their fear that the looting and lawlessness they’ve all seen in New
Orleans this week might come to their town.This story is playing itself out all over the region now. It is a time
like never before in our lifetimes for strong moral leadership from the
Church — and not just in a standard "give money to help the poor" way.
The people who lost their houses in and around New Orleans are not by
any means the only displaced people in this catastrophe. The social and
moral challenges all people in the Gulf Coast region will face as an
entire city disperses throughout the region will be unprecedented —
and will require unprecedented vision, courage and grace to get through
decently. Now is truly the moment for the Church — pastors and laity
alike.
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