The worst kind of scandal is what brings the church itself into disrepute, because that undermines the faith of the community of believers. Indeed, canon law not only specifies ecclesiastical punishment for clerics who cause scandal by their misbehavior but also it allows a penalty to be suspended “whenever the offender cannot observe it without danger of grave scandal or infamy.”

In brief, the reason the word “scandal” appears again and again in abuse documents from the Pennsylvania dioceses—and from wherever else in the Catholic world such documents have come to light—is that bishops and their minions have understood themselves to have theological and canonical warrant for keeping the sins of the priests out of public view.

The irony, of course, is that all this avoidance of scandal has resulted in the greatest scandal in the Catholic Church since the Reformation, if not of all time.
So if the culture Pope Francis says he wants is to be created, what the church teaches about scandal needs to be changed.

More and more insurgent progressive candidates are betting that they can face off and win against incumbents and more moderate challengers in Democratic primaries nationwide. In Eastern Massachusetts, progressive City Councilor Ayanna Pressley is taking on 10-term Congressman Michael Capuano in 7th District, and Brianna Wu is challenging Stephen Lynch, a nine-term congressman. Likewise, in Delaware, Kerri Harris, a black, lesbian, military veteran, is running to unseat establishment senator Tom Carper. And, of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the party when she ousted Joe Crowley, the King of Queens, and signaled to other progressive insurgents that they have a chance.
Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, a black Muslim mother of seven, is betting that she, too, can take down a high-ranking career politician in the September 4 Democratic primary In Massachusetts’s First Congressional District.

This hysteria reveals a fundamental misunderstanding among media pundits and political elites about why the DSA is experiencing such explosive growth. Whether suggesting democratic socialism is just for white men, that its policies are too radical for most Americans, that it will bankrupt the country, that it’s a dangerous foreign concept, or that it will spell disaster for the Democratic Party, these critics consistently seem to miss the mark. In reality, such claims often betray the fact that the rise of socialism materially endangers their current positions of both wealth and power.
Having lived through the worst financial crisis in a generation and a pitiless job market while facing mounting student debt and the looming threat of climate havoc, millennials — on the cusp of becoming the country’s largest bloc of eligible voters — have grown disillusioned with capitalism and, according to a 2016 YouGov survey, now view socialism more favorably.

After right-wing provocateur and pseudo-intellectual Ben Shapiro made an almost certainly illegal offer earlier this week to donate $10,000 to New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign if she agreed to a public debate on the merits of socialism, Ocasio-Cortez compared Shapiro's "unsolicited" offer to "catcalling" and argued bad-faith actors like Shapiro don't deserve a response.
"Just like catcalling, I don't owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions," Ocasio-Cortez wrote after a right-wing reporter accused her of refusing to reply to Shapiro's request. "And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one."

A study of rising bankruptcy rates among older Americans places blame squarely at the feet of a hollowed-out safety net and policy changes that have left people without adequate retirement savings, paying huge out-of-pocket medical expenses, and seeing their funds dwindle due to the student loan crisis that many people mistakenly believe affects only younger generations.
When comparing the rate of bankruptcy filing among Americans 65 and older now versus in 1991, "the only explanation that makes any sense are structural shifts," Deborah Thorne, lead author of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project's recent study, told the New York Times.

Denmark this week wrote the latest chapter in a global story that is becoming strangely familiar. The country’s new ban on any “garment that hides the face in public”—widely understood to be targeting Islamic veils like the burqa and niqab—entered into effect on Wednesday.

Limitations on wearing face veils in public have already been enacted in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Austria. They’ve been debated as far as Australia and the Canadian province of Quebec. Despite regional differences, a similar pattern of events has recurred in some of the countries. Although not every element of the pattern has appeared in every country, France, Quebec, and Austria, for instance, have followed a progression that goes roughly like this.

As a growing number of political candidates facing November elections proclaim their support for single-payer healthcare—which the majority of Americans want to replace the nation's current for-profit system—the Democratic primary for Hawaii's 1st Congressional District is shedding light on the insurance and pharmaceutical industry forces working against a transition to Medicare for All.....

"Democrats running in a primary election will say they support 'Medicare for All,' but what do they say to lobbyists behind the scenes?" responded fellow candidate Kaniela Ing, a vocal supporter of Medicare for All and other progressive policies who did not meet with the healthcare industry lobbyists.

The bottom line is he wants to meet with Mueller just like he wants to go in for a root canal. There’s no way he wants to do that. He knows that he can’t go in. If he was really innocent and he really had nothing to hide, he would have gone in there a long time ago. What he has done is not the actions of somebody who is innocent and someone who has nothing to hide. He has done everything he can up to this point to avoid having to talk about this at all with the prosecutors.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable things ever said about God in the Hebrew Bible occurs in Exodus 3 when Moses first encounters the deity and asks for its name. In verse 14, God responds, “I am who I am,” which is simply a mixture of “to be” verbs in Hebrew without any specific reference to gender. If anything, the book of Exodus is clear that God is simply “being,” which echoes later Christian doctrine that God is spirit.