polkit failed / not activating Authorization Manager : timed out for org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1

After an update of our RedHat server 7.4 (polkit-0.112-12.el7_3.x86_64), there are many services that won't boot because
polkit is not activating the Authorization Manager:
Dec 11 15:58:17 aleph.CRM.UMontreal.CA systemd[1]: Starting Authorization Manager...
Dec 11 15:58:17 aleph.CRM.UMontreal.CA polkitd[42299]: Started polkitd version 0.112
Dec 11 15:58:17 aleph.CRM.UMontreal.CA polkitd[42299]: Loading rules from directory /etc/polkit-1/rules.d
Dec 11 15:58:17 aleph.CRM.UMontreal.CA polkitd[42299]: Loading rules from directory /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d
Dec 11 15:58:17 aleph.CRM.UMontreal.CA polkitd[42299]: Finished loading, compiling and executing 7 rules
Dec 11 15:58:17 aleph.CRM.UMontreal.CA polkitd[42299]: Acquired the name org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 on the system bus
Dec 11 15:59:47 aleph.CRM.UMontreal.CA systemd[1]: polkit.service start operation timed out. Terminating.
Dec 11 15:59:47 aleph.CRM.UMontreal.CA systemd[1]: Failed to start Authorization Manager.

Then there are problems with dbus continually restarting, NetworkManager, avahi-daemon.service, and others because of this org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1

I checked that all the rules in /etc/polkit-1/ are exactly the same with exact same permission as 1 year ago.
Also I am not using SELinux, so this is not the problem.
And I reinstall polkit just in case: yum reinstall polkit

dbus and other services are not starting for this reason. I googled the problem and didn't see anything.
Using RedHat 7.4 (kernel 3.10.0-693.11.1.el7.x86_64 with polkit-0.112-12.el7_3.x86_64). They are most recent version
today.

If I looked at a trace with strace, I see this looping after trying to start it:
poll([{fd=5, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN}], 2, -1) = 1 ([{fd=5, revents=POLLIN}])
read(5, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 16) = 8
with sometimes this line appears:
futex(0x560d2fca1d50, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1

It seems to wait for something to start the Auth Manager with org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1

Any idea what is wrong? checked so many things, don't know where to go.

Daniel