Catholic Nutshell News: Friday 10/24/25
Topics include: King Charles asked to abdicate; Are American Jews anti-Zionists?; ‘Wokeness’ isn’t simply an ideology; & Hamas’ war on women
Fridays, "Living that coconut kinda life."
Today's sources: National Catholic Register, Catholic News Agency, Word on Fire, Our Sunday Visitor, ChurchPOP, & Aleteia. (Catholic Nutshell is a FREE subscription service for faithful, hopeful, & curious Catholics willing to exercise their Catholic News Muscle)
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Catholic News Agency
Northern Ireland cleric calls for King Charles to abdicate
By Patrick J. Passmore, October 23, 2025
King Charles III has acted contrary to the oath made at his coronation and should now “let someone else take his place, who is a true Protestant and who will take their vows seriously,” a prominent Free Presbyterian minister from Northern Ireland said after the king prayed with Pope Leo XIV on Thursday in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Rev. Kyle Paisley, the son of firebrand Democratic Unionist Party founder Ian Paisley, made the statements in a letter to Newspapers in Northern Ireland and subsequently in an interview on BBC Radio as well as other media outlets. In the Sistine Chapel prayer service, King Charles, the supreme governor of the Church of England, accompanied by Queen Camilla, sat at Pope Leo’s left-hand side as the pope and Anglican Archbishop Stephen Cottrell led prayers.
The Pillar
Oddities in the big picture of English bishops’ appointments
By Luke Coppen, October 21, 2025
In England, a significant proportion of priests asked to become bishops decline the role. Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, said in 2023 that around 30% of priests worldwide decline episcopal appointments. This would make the quest to fill English vacancies considerably harder. Meanwhile, the Catholic magazine The Tablet reported this week that Bishop David Oakley, who has led the Diocese of Northampton since 2020, has taken a leave of absence for unexplained personal reasons. The appointment process for England has appeared to stutter in recent years. The two abortive nominations to the Diocese of Plymouth in December 2023 and September 2024 represented major setbacks and raised questions about the vetting procedures for vacancies. The difficulties in Plymouth followed the resignation in December 2022 of Bishop Robert Byrne as the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle.
CatholicVote
‘Wokeness’ isn’t simply an ideology
By Kelsey Reinhardt, October 23, 2025
Author Helen Andrews’ book, called The Great Feminization, is startling in its simplicity: when male-dominated fields become majority-female, they don’t just change in demographics—they change in nature. Institutions that once prized merit, confrontation, and truth-seeking begin to adopt values more aligned with relational safety and emotional comfort. She has concluded that “wokeness” isn’t simply an ideology. It’s the demographic endgame of feminized institutions. Evidence is found in colleges, where women outnumber men and where debate is increasingly discouraged in favor of groupthink; in media outlets, like The New York Times, where dissenting views are often cast as personal harms; in law, where once adversarial arenas are now framed in terms of trauma and therapeutic justice; and in human resources departments, which have become the enforcers of new moral codes rooted in emotional safety, not objective truth.
National Catholic Register
Hamas’ war on women reveals what Hamas is and believes
By Gia Chacón, October 23, 2025
What happened to Israeli women in Hamas captivity was not the collateral damage of war. It was deliberate. Their treatment followed a logic of humiliation and subjugation. Women’s bodies were used as weapons of propaganda, objects of conquest, and instruments of psychological warfare. This is how Hamas fights. Their war strategy dehumanizes women in service of a larger mission: the destruction of the Jewish people. On Nov. 24, 2023, during the first truce, Hamas released 13 Israeli women and children. More followed in the days ahead. Many had been kept in isolation. They were assaulted and denied food, medicine, clean clothes, light, and human contact—tactics exist to terrorize communities, to shame entire families, to assert domination over the human body itself. The abuse of women in captivity was part of a broader campaign to destroy the Jewish people, an effort Hamas has declared openly and repeatedly, per their 1988 charter.
The Times of Israel
How many American Jews are anti-Zionists?
By Luke Tress, October 24, 2025
Are anti-Zionist Jews a significant bloc of the American Jewish community, or insignificant outliers? There is no clear answer, largely due to differing understandings of Zionism, a lack of data, and difficulties surveying US Jews. However, the proportion of anti-Zionist Jews is likely marginal, Jewish community pollsters said. Zionism, in the US today, is generally defined as support for Jewish self-determination in Israel, but not necessarily support for Israel’s government. “Today, if you’re anti-Zionist, to me, it would mean that you’re against the existence of a Jewish state somewhere in the Holy Land,” said Ira Sheskin, a geographer at the University of Miami and the director of the Jewish Demography Project. “The percentage of Jews who fall in that category is very tiny.” Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the leading anti-Zionist Jewish group in the US, reports 32,000 dues-paying members — a minuscule percentage of 7.5 million American Jews.
Catholic World Report
What comes after the insanity of the transgender moment?
By Anne Hendershott, October 23, 2025
The transgender moment, once hailed by many as a moral imperative and cultural breakthrough, is giving way to a reckoning as ideology is finally beginning to acknowledge reality. A new study by political scientist Eric Kaufman found a marked decline in the number of students identifying as nonbinary or transgender between 2022 and 2025. At Brown University, the percentage of students identifying as nonbinary dropped from 5% to 2.8%, while at Andover, the figure fell from 9.2% to 3%. We are now entering a new phase in the cultural norms surrounding gender identity, one marked less by celebration than by scrutiny and the acceptance of reality. From courtrooms to classrooms, the costs of uncritical affirmation of gender ideology are now clear. As the cultural tide has begun to turn, it is time for society to catch up with both common sense and Catholic teachings on gender and to reckon with the consequences of medical and ideological overreach.
Pioneer Press
Justice Amy Coney Barrett: ‘The court has to take a longer view’
Interview with Barrett by Ross Douthat, October 21, 2025
There’s a roster of cases before the Supreme Court that could reshape the entire Trump presidency and redefine executive power. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, my guest last week on my Times Opinion podcast, “Interesting Times,” is likely to be the decisive vote in some of these cases. My goal was to push Barrett on a question she can answer—one she addresses at length in her new book, “Listening to the Law.” I wanted to know whether her preferred legal theory, originalism, bends in response to prudential and political concerns. Barrett believes strongly that it shouldn’t, that justices should rule without worrying about political pressures or considerations. “I think this is actually a disconnect between what observers of the court expect to see and what the court can actually do — the press and the public live in a particular moment. The court has to take a longer view, and so the content of doctrine cannot turn on just the precise political moment.”
Related: What Amy Coney Barrett said about her faith in CBS interview, Sep 10, 2025, Mariya Manzhos, Deseret News
Vatican News
Leo XIV: We must do everything to sustain the family
By Deborah Castellano Lubov, October 24, 2025
“Everywhere and always, we are called to sustain, defend, and promote the family,” Pope Leo XIV reaffirmed in his remarks on Friday morning to the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. Observing that the challenges are diverse across different social, economic, and cultural contexts, he said that the faithful must support the family at all times, “above all through a way of life coherent with the Gospel.” The proclamation of the Gospel, which, the Holy Father marveled, transforms life and society, “commits us to promote organic and concerted actions in support of the family.” “The quality of a country’s social and political life is,” he underscored, “measured particularly by how it allows families to live well, to have time for themselves, and to cultivate the bonds that keep them united.”
Big Pulpit, CNA & ChurchPOP for 10/24/25
Big Pulpit
Tito Edwards Catholic site: October 24, 2025
The Big Pulpit website is a news aggregator that gathers quality insights and analysis on the Catholic Church worldwide.
Dear Pope Leo XIV: We Need an Encyclical on the Eucharist – Paul G. Kengor, Ph.D., at Crisis
How 1964 Roman Missal Fulfilled What Sacrosanctum Concilium Recommended – Fr. A. McDonald
Jesuit-Run Amerika Magazine On Leo XIV & the TLM: A Fisk! – Fr. Z’s Blog
Bishop Schneider: The Church Can’t Continue Into Further Confusion – Michael Haynes at Per Mariami - Mater Dolorosa
Catholic News Agency
CNA’s top headlines — October 24, 2025
Catholic News Agency provides reliable and free up-to-the-minute news affecting the Universal Church, with updates on the words of the Holy Father and the Holy See.
Pope Leo XIV encourages Order of the Holy Sepulchre in its mission in the Holy Land - Oct 23, 2025 - By Almudena Martínez-Bordiú - Pope Leo XIV thanked them for their humble service to the communities of the Holy Land, where they are called to bear witness “that life conquers death.”
Pope Leo XIV criticizes pharmaceutical industry’s role in scourge of opioid addiction - Oct 23, 2025 - By Kristina Millare - Leo decried the devastating impact of opioid addiction in the U.S., criticizing the pharmaceutical industry for its lack of “a global ethic” for the sake of profits.
French bishop denounces euthanasia as contradicting ‘immemorial law’: ‘You shall not kill’ - Oct 23, 2025 - By Almudena Martínez-Bordiú - French Bishop Philippe Christory spoke on the “end-of-life” bill, which is under legislative review after years of political pressure to legalize euthanasia in the country.
ChurchPOP Trending
ChurchPOP provides fun, informative, and authentically Catholic news and culture - October 24, 2025
‘Make Halloween Catholic Again’: Father Josh Johnson’s 3 Holy Ways to Celebrate - The “Ask Fr. Josh” series presented on the Ascension Presents YouTube Channel asks us to make Halloween Catholic again, and he explains how we can do it.
Why Satan Is So Scared of Saint John Paul II, According to Rome’s Former Chief Exorcist - “Because he disrupted my plans…”
My 20,000-Mile Pilgrimage Across America: The Peace I Found Visiting 30 Marian Shrines - “What I found on the road wasn’t just scenery or self-discovery—it was Mary.”
Nutshell reflections for 10/24/25:
USCCB Daily Reflection: AUDIO - October 24, 2025
Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Catholic Weekly
Lebanon eagerly awaits Pope Leo’s visit as ‘pilgrim of peace’
By Dale Gavlak, October 23, 2025
“All the Lebanese people, the youth, the church, the government, and Lebanon’s president are all very excited,” Father Jean Younes, secretary general of the Assembly of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops of Lebanon, told OSV News about the preparations. While Pope Leo’s first trip abroad starts on 27 November in Turkey to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the beginnings of the Nicene Creed, recited by all mainline Christians, the Lebanon leg represents an entirely different facet. The people see the visit as undergirding support for Christians buffeted by regional events. Bishop César Essayan, apostolic vicar of Beirut, told OSV News that the pope comes to Lebanon to minister peace as the country is “sick from 50 years of war and is seeking peace and a new life. He comes to give us a message of hope and peace in this year of Jubilee,” he said.
Aleteia
Is it sinful for Christians to watch horror movies?
By Philip Kosloski, October 24, 2025
Horror movies and TV shows are everywhere in the month of October. It is the most popular time of year to turn on the latest entry in what has become a major genre in filmmaking. Yet, some Christians are horrified at the popularity of horror. From the Church’s point of view, there is no official prohibition of the horror genre. This means that watching a horror movie largely rests on a person’s personal discernment. Steven D. Greydanus explains that, “[t]he grotesque, the macabre, and the frightful have an abiding place in human imagination and culture — a place that Christian sensibility has historically not seen fit to reject or condemn, at least entirely.” At the same time, this does not mean that all horror is good for a Christian soul to consume. Many films will display scenes of excessive violence, ones that are can make some people throw-up. Additionally, some horror films praise the occult and satanic, holding them up as valid paths for anyone to follow.
Word on Fire
Using a person’s first name is a new stage in the relationship
By Fr. Brian A. Graebe, October 23, 2025
A recent front-page story in The Wall Street Journal noted many people’s adverse reactions to having their name used in conversation, describing the tactic as manipulative, aggressive, and phony. Repeated name use, far from sounding sincere, often comes across as a shallow sales tactic. In his 1936 bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote that “a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” The advice seems to be a matter of simple courtesy, acknowledging an often-overlooked personal dignity. God has the right to name or rename his own creatures, whether giving Abram the greater (longer) name of Abraham or stating that Simon shall henceforth be known as Cephas, or Peter. Calling someone by name denotes an intimacy and familiarity. Some of this familiarity is lost in America’s casual culture, where almost everyone is on a first-name basis from the start, but historically, inviting someone to use a first name signals a new, closer stage in the relationship.
Catholic365
Do not abandon the sheep to the wolves
By Laura Rosenberg, October 23, 2025
To His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, and to the Cardinals, Bishops, and Priests entrusted with the souls of the faithful, a Catholic mother pleads to the shepherds: I write not out of rebellion, but out of anguish—anguish for the countless faithful left defenseless while their shepherds debate metaphors. You have been given authority to heal, to cast out, to drive back the enemy—and yet you’ve buried that authority under bureaucracy, academic language, and modern doubt. But the devil hides while you hesitate. He rarely shows himself in theatrical ways. He doesn’t need to. He hides in despair, addiction, rage, and self-hatred. He thrives on your disbelief. As long as you tell yourselves he’s not there, he wins. Every moment of silence from you strengthens his grip. Will you be able to say, “I used the authority You gave me and fought for the soul You placed before me”? The shepherd who abandons the sheep to the wolves is not neutral—he is complicit.
Image of Coconut by Celio Nicoli from Pixabay
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