Many Catholic bishops and priests are frustrated by the continued coverage of the sex abuse crisis in the media. ….

They argue that since the widespread mishandling of abuse in the Boston Archdiocese was exposed in 2002, the church in the United States has put in place policies and procedures to deal with abuse.
It’s true that many precautions have been taken. Seminarians and priests, as well as employees and volunteers who work with children, must now go through a police background check. Any accusations of abuse must be reported to law enforcement. In some states, clergy are now mandatory reporters and will be prosecuted if they do not report abuse....

The bishops and their defenders point out that almost all of the abuse cases reported in the news and grand jury reports are old cases. Most of the cases in the Pennsylvania grand jury report, for example, were decades old: Of the 300 priests with accusations of abuse, only two had been accused of committing abuse in the last 10 years. Almost half the priests are dead. All are out of ministry....

There is only one way the bishops can begin to regain credibility, and that is to give a full and credible account of past abuse. Each diocese must publish the names of priests credibly accused, what they were accused of, when the diocese learned of the abuse, and what the bishop did.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is unfazed by Republican attempts to bully him into being steamrolled during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Booker called the Republican Senate rules a “sham” and said he’s not worried about being expelled from Congress.
Instead, the New Jersey senator said he is going to keep releasing documents or all Americans to see – even if that means violating GOP rules.

It’s become almost a late-summer ritual on the anti-immigration front: The hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) bringing together a group of conservative talk radio hosts to bash immigrants and cheer on President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric.

Whataboutism gives a clue to its meaning in its name. It is not merely the changing of a subject ("What about the economy?&quot to deflect away from an earlier subject as a political strategy; it’s essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.
The tactic behind whataboutism has been around for a long time.
Rhetoricians generally consider it to be a form of tu quoque, which means "you too" in Latin and involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation made against you. Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.

Negative stereotypes abound of how women are treated under Islam. But there's a new movement of women-led mosques who are challenging this, and making both Muslims and non-Muslims think differently about the faith.

The months ahead of midterm elections, often a time of lower turnout among African-Americans and others, have become a focus of passionate activity by black Christian leaders.
“The attacks on the Voting Rights Act and other setbacks in civil rights have alerted the faith community that we need to take action,” said the Rev. Barbara Williams-Skinner, co-chair of the National African American Clergy Network. “We need to be proactive and not reactive.”

In the days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, a group of women from Everett, Washington, came together to channel their grief, anger and exasperation in a positive direction. Together, they decided to mount a pro-choice resistance to the steady presence of anti-choice harassers outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in their town.
Nearly two years later, the organization they created — Jane’s Sidewalk Supporters for Choice — is still going strong. They provide support and protection to women in need of reproductive health care, and they sustain each other as activists in the face of harassment from anti-choice forces. Cathy Benson, Suzanne Mahan Apodaca, Karen Knapp and Janean Desmarais spoke with Seattle clinic defender Michelle Farber about the history of their group and the plans they have going forward.