Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Without Social Security Income, A Majority of U.S. Seniors Would Be Poor by Neil Shah: “The latest figures show how important America’s social policies—everything from Social Security to the Earned Income Tax Credit—are for the incomes of Americans, especially seniors and children. If Census were to exclude Social Security benefits from income, the poverty rate for American seniors would jump from 14.6% to a whopping 52.6%—roughly 23.4 million people. The nation’s overall poverty rate (based on the alternative measure) would rise to 24.1% from 15.5%.”

Does political spending stymie movement on other issues? by Vinnie Rotondaro with Patrick Carolan: “It takes the common good away. It’s no longer about the common good. It’s about the good of the people who have the money. And so that really clogs the whole political process. You see cuts for food stamps occurring at the same time that the wealthy and corporations are being given tax cuts and other benefits.”

Teddy Roosevelt Was a Real Independent. Today’s Versions Are Poseurs by Michael Kazin: “There is no shortage of elite groups, like Third Way and the Peterson Foundation, that yearn to advance a “moderate” platform….Skillful at pleasing pundits and raising funds, these groups have no clue and little real interest in inspiring activists or voters. Unless that changes, today’s independent candidates will be able, at most, to nudge the discourse of the two parties a bit further toward some muddled middle than to become the prophets of a new era of reform.”

Of Michael Landon and Brittany Maynard by Wesley Smith: “If assisted suicide is now considered ‘courageous’ and equates with ‘death with dignity,’ doesn’t that imply that people like Landon who choose to ‘fight against the dying of the light’ are undignified and perhaps less courageous?”

Will conservatives turn on Pope Francis? by John Allen: “Is a tipping point drawing close, when conservatives who have been inclined to give Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt will, instead, turn on him? Granted, labels such as ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ often conceal as much as they reveal, especially when applied to the Church. That said, they capture something at a big-picture level, and the fault line between left and right has seemed especially clear over the past two weeks.”

How Republicans Became More Conservative Than the Pope by Sr. Simone Campbell: “These politicians do not know that living on a minimum-wage job means that families survive by using the very programs—Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), etc.—that Republicans talk so flippantly about cutting. They do not know that low-income families sometimes need to choose between heat, gasoline, food and medicine, and that a hard day’s work might not be possible for those struggling from hunger or illness. It is not a question of being lazy; it is a question of not earning a living wage.”

Between Pain and Hope by Jessica Keating: “In this remote area, this backwater of Rwanda, the narrative of ethnic identity, distorted and fossilized during colonization, crumbled. Identities of Hutu and Tutsi were decisively interrupted. In the enactment of a solidarity that went all the way down to death, we glimpse a sign of new vision, of the new creation amidst the horror of sin.”

Seven Things Paul VI Did Before Pope Francis Made it Cool by Don Clemmer: “There’s been ample consideration of how Pope Francis completes a triumvirate with his two immediate predecessors, and it’s easy to compare Francis to the jovial, Council-calling, tradition-shirking John XXIII. But in numerous other ways, there’s a direct line of influence from Pope Paul to his latest successor, who was ordained a priest during Paul’s pontificate and largely formed by it.”

Paul Farmer on Ebola: “This isn’t a natural disaster, this is the terrorism of poverty” by Joel Achenbach: “Africa’s Ebola problem is now America’s Ebola problem. The best way for the United States to free itself of the terror of this virus is to ensure that it is wiped out at the source, where the epidemic is currently out of control. That will happen only through a coordinated effort to provide the kind of basic, front-line health care that we take for granted in the developed world but which is tragically scarce in impoverished countries.”

The Catholic Church Explains Sexual Mores—With Economics by Emma Green: “The Church has a moral interest in preserving and promoting relationships; if market-driven individualism undermines those relationships, then it’s logical for the Church to push back against market-driven individualism.”

Synod report narrows open tone, Pope calls for middle path by  Joshua McElwee: “Emphatically calling on the prelates to ‘feed the flock’ and to search for lost sheep, the pontiff also directed them to avoid the temptation to become either a ‘hostile rigorist’ concerned only with enforcing church doctrine or a “destructive do-gooder” that advocates “false mercy” instead of truth telling.”

Finding healing and acceptance after same-sex love collides with religion by Elizabeth Tenety: “It’s hard to come out as gay. It is even harder when your parents are profoundly committed conservative Catholics, your brother is a prominent priest who represents traditional church views on Fox News, and you were raised to believe that everything the church teaches is true.”

Virginity: Tough for Men and Women by Dustin Siggins: “As a sexually abstinent 29-year old male, I came of age battling with some of the same problems she still does. As a lifelong practicing Catholic — Burkhardt is Lutheran — it was difficult to date within the public school system. Even though fewer than half of high school students engage in sexual relations, breaking the public expectation of sex (especially as a guy, since we allegedly think about sex every eight seconds) made dating particularly difficult.”

In expansive Pakistan, Christians struggle to find space for cemeteries by Tim Craig: “Christians in Pakistan have been targets of what human rights activists call an unprecedented wave of violence against religious minorities, including Shiites, Ahmadis, Sikhs and Hindus. Thousands of members of religious minority groups have been killed over the past five years. But the Christians’ dwindling burial space is an example of a less dramatic but more persistent battle they say takes place behind the bloody headlines: a daily struggle for what might seem to be basic rights.”