Vox: I’ve spent 30 years counseling priests who fall in love. Here’s what I learned.

The real challenge comes after ordination, when the observing eyes of superiors are far away. Over the past 30 years, the number of priests has been going down dramatically. Young priests are often sent to parishes alone after minimal on-the-job training with an older colleague.

This can be heady, exciting, frightening, anxiety-producing, and even intoxicating. It is also easy in this context to feel lonely, misunderstood, and powerfully desirous of solace beyond the purely spiritual kind.

It is here that love can bloom more easily. Not the theoretical, theological kind of love discussed in training, but the actual, sensuous, immediate, and non-intellectualized power trip of falling for someone. The space where moral imperatives can easily get fuzzy and slip into the background. [...]

Why not? The world of the priesthood as I have observed it is, curiously, a male, even a macho one. Christian values might be called "feminine" (patience, forbearance, gentleness), but the purveyors of those values are expected to carry on often intense work in a solitary way with minimal support.

Bitching? Moaning? Those are for weaker men. It is the job of the priest to be strong in the midst of others' weakness. His own weakness, sadly, is a private affair. [...]

The other issue here is violation of integrity. By "integrity" I mean simply being the person you claim to be. Once a priest presents himself as a chaste, committed celibate but is actually sexually active, he has destroyed one of the pillars supporting his mental health.

The significance of this can hardly be underestimated. While it is fashionable these days in mental health circles to conceive of anxiety as a free-floating condition, it is often related to such profound violations of personal integrity. [...]

A more challenging development would be to expand priests' knowledge of human sexuality and intimacy as well as increase their regard for those critical parts of the human experience. This would require more candid and less judgmental communication about these aspects of life and would reflect a move away from the idealized role of the priest as a person without need. That is, after all, just a facade.

While some efforts have been made in this direction, there is a longstanding tendency in the Catholic tradition to value sexual abstinence over sexual relationships, committed or otherwise. Measures that level the field between priests and parishioners would help bridge the distance between the two, opening up more options for actual friendship and genuine collaboration.

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Vox: Get to know António Guterres. He'll be running the UN for a while.

Guterres had been the rumored frontrunner for months, but the selection still came as a bit of a surprise because many UN diplomats and observers believed that Moscow would only accept a candidate from Eastern Europe. (The current UN head, Ban Ki-moon, comes from South Korea; Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, was from Ghana.)

In the end, Guterres, a consummate UN insider, easily beat out other top contenders like Argentinian Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, either of whom would have been the first woman to lead the world body.

Guterres’s victory was hailed by UN watchers, who describe Guterres in glowing terms. Formerly the UN high commissioner on refugees, Guterres is well-liked, with a reputation for being eloquent and outspoken on human rights. He also has a history of challenging powerful countries to do more to help the vulnerable rather than deferring to them. It’s a bold choice for an organization better known for making the safe one. [...]

“He consistently positioned himself as the voice of world refugees; a sort of moral center who would put his own career prospects on the line by calling out powerful countries,” Mark Leon Goldberg, a journalist at UN Dispatch who covers the world body closely, writes. [...]

A key qualification of Guterres is his skill for public outreach — his ability to make a case for refugees and the need to assist refugees that grabs the attention of the world. Public advocacy isn’t the strong suit of Ban, a soft-spoken diplomat who chooses his words carefully and is, to his critics, far too hesitant to criticize major powers like Washington and Moscow. [...]

“The first UN secretary general, Trygve Lie, describe it as ‘the most impossible job in the world,’” Bosco says. “You have all of this demand that the organization respond — but you don’t have the power to make [it].”

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Business Insider: You may be surprised by the 10 countries that hold over half the world's refugees

Ten countries, accounting for just 2.5 per cent of global GDP, are sheltering 56 per cent of the world’s 21 million refugees, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The rights group criticised the wealthiest countries for showing “a near absence of leadership and responsibility” while the refugee crisis escalates. [...]

The report highlights the contrast in the number of refugees from Syria taken by its neighbours and by other countries with similar populations.

The UK has taken fewer than 8,000 Syrian refugees since the country’s civil war began in 2011, while Jordan, which has a population almost 10 times smaller than the UK and just 1.2 per cent of its GDP, hosts more than 655,000 Syrian refugees. [...]

“It’s disgraceful that the UK hosts less than one per cent of the world’s refugees when our size and prosperity mean we should do so much more. Desperate families are forced into the hands of traffickers precisely because countries like ours have pulled up the drawbridge. Smaller, poorer neighbouring countries are left to try and cope, and when they can’t, more people are forced to try to move on, seeking a basic level of safety

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The Guardian: The murder that killed free media in Russia

Ten years after Politkovskaya was shot in the lobby of her apartment block in Moscow, Novaya Gazeta continues to be one of the few outlets for hard-hitting independent journalism in Russia. Its reporters still work from the North Caucasus, one the most dangerous part of the region. [...]

This September, a number of mothers of victims, who have long campaigned for an independent investigation into the events of the siege, planned a protest to mark the anniversary and wore T-shirts bearing the words: “Putin is the butcher of Beslan”.

Kostyuchenko and a photographer who went to cover the event were followed, intimidated, doused in green paint and beaten up during their time in the town. Kostyuchenko spent a week in hospital with concussion after being hit in the head. [...]

Since 2006, the Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded 20 journalists’ killings, while Freedom House has counted 63 violent attacks on reporters. But for the most part, the threat of closure keeps publications in line and encourages self-censorship.

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Hindustan Times: Automation threatens 69% of jobs in India, 77% in China: World Bank

Automation threatens 69% of jobs in India, 77% in China, according to a World Bank research which says that technology could fundamentally disrupt the pattern of traditional economic paths in developing countries.

“As we continue to encourage more investment in infrastructure to promote growth, we also have to think about the kinds of infrastructure that countries will need in the economy of the future. We all know that technology has and will continue to fundamentally reshape the world,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said.

“But the traditional economic path from increasing productivity of agriculture to light manufacturing and then to full-scale industrialisation may not be possible for all developing countries,” Kim said in response to a question at the Brookings Institute during a discussion on extreme poverty yesterday.

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National Public Radio: Along Germany's Coast, A Nazi Resort Becomes An Upscale Destination

It's a legacy Germany has struggled to erase by re-purposing or razing Nazi-era structures. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, for example, was placed in an old SS barracks in Nuremburg, while the German Finance Ministry took over the Nazi aviation building in Berlin.

The Berlin bunker where Hitler spent his final days was reduced to a parking lot.

Usually there's little or no complaint about these refurbishments. But one government-sanctioned plan for a Third Reich landmark is sparking a public outcry — a commercial exploitation of the biggest Nazi relic on the Baltic Sea coast.

It's a resort Hitler built between 1936 and 1939 along sandy, white beaches for working-class Germans, one that was grandiose even by Nazi standards. Concrete dormitories that are six stories high and 550 yards wide were erected side by side over 2.8 miles of pristine coastline on the northern island of Ruegen.[...]

Awareness of the site's grim history is something museum director Lucke and other critics of the project believe will dissipate with the conversion. Many historians and some former residents of the site during East German times feel it glosses over a dangerous part of German history that shouldn't be forgotten.

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The Guardian: EU plan to counter Brexit: give teenagers free InterRail tickets

The Euopean Union will consider giving all Europeans a free continental rail pass for their 18th birthday but officials said the idea faces numerous obstacles.

“We admire the boldness and the level of ambition, and we are ready to explore it further,” transport commissioner Violeta Bulc told the European Parliament on Tuesday in a response to a resolution backed by lawmakers, including the main conservative bloc. [...]

A summer rite of passage for millions of Europeans since the 1970s, the InterRail system is now used by some 300,000 people a year and costs those under 26 years old €479 (£421) for a full month.

With five million or more Europeans turning 18 each year, the potential cost and strain on the rail system in popular destinations, could be immense. One option, Bulc said, could be to limit the issue of the birthday passes via a lottery.

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The Atlantic: Abortion Returns to the Debate

In a debate filled with yelling and interruptions, it was the moment when Tim Kaine and Mike Pence finally got quiet: They were talking about their struggles with faith. Kaine spoke about having to preside over executions while he was governor of Virginia, even though he’s morally opposed to the death penalty. Pence, however, turned the question around and brought up an issue no moderator has dared to ask about: abortion. [...]

Both Clinton and Kaine tend to avoid detailed discussions of abortion and faith. As Kaine pointed out, Clinton comes from a Methodist background—a church that tentatively accepts abortion, but only in certain, rare cases. Kaine is a Catholic who has said he is personally opposed to abortion, as Pence pointed out. While it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton supports partial-birth abortion—“I have been on record in favor of a late pregnancy regulation that would have exceptions for the life and health of the mother,” she said in March—over the years, she has shifted her language and policy positions to support the procedure. This year, she became the first Democratic nominee to run on a ticket that proposes a repeal of the Hyde Amendment—a budget provision that bans the use of federal funds to pay for most abortions. [...]

Many Americans see abortion as a complicated moral question, too, including many religious conservatives. Mike Pence spoke about the sanctity of life softly and directly, arguing that positions on abortion are “the fundamental difference between the Clinton-Kaine ticket and the Trump-Pence ticket.” But his tone stands in contrast to the way Trump has spoken about abortion in the past—he once said women should be “punished” for having abortions. Pence denied this during the debate—“Donald Trump and I would never support legislation that would punish women who made the heartbreaking choice,” he claimed—but it was a reminder of just how different the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates are. Many of those conservatives who have declared themselves Never Trump have pointed to this very issue: “There is nothing in [Trump’s] campaign or his previous record that gives us grounds for confidence that he genuinely shares our commitments to the right to life,” wrote more than a dozen conservative Catholic leaders in an open letter published in National Review last March.

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Business Insider: The 2016 electoral map looks very similar to 2012 — but already a few big differences are forming

The 2016 Electoral College map is looking very similar to the map from 2012, but already a few major differences are evident.

As of Monday, four states have flipped from 2012, when President Barack Obama faced off against Republican nominee Mitt Romney: Nevada, Iowa, and Ohio from blue to red, and North Carolina from red to blue. In addition, the 2nd Congressional District in Maine flipped from blue to red, providing an extra electoral vote.

If that map were to hold, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would top Republican nominee Donald Trump by a 312-226 total - a slightly tighter race compared with Obama's 332-206 victory in 2012.

But it's not so safe for Clinton just yet. In Colorado and Pennsylvania, Clinton is polling slightly below where Obama finished in 2012 - with Colorado amounting to a virtual toss-up, and Pennsylvania not too far behind. In North Carolina, where Romney won by 2 points in 2012, Clinton's lead is as slight as can be over Trump. [...]

The best piece of news for Trump is his semisubstantial lead in Ohio. That state has voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1964; the last time the state voted against the national winner was in 1960, when it went in favor of then Vice President Richard Nixon instead of former President John F. Kennedy.

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