Catholic Nutshell News: Saturday 11/15/25
Topics include: Planned Parenthood centers closed; Leo and the traditional liturgy; Border czar says bishops are wrong; & A confusing culture of casual sex
“We see through new tender verdant pecan leaves”
Today's sources: National Catholic Register, Catholic News Agency, The Pillar, Crux, 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
Nearly 70 Planned Parenthood centers have closed this year
By Kate Quiñones, November 15, 2025
Nearly 70 Planned Parenthood centers have closed this year due to Medicaid and Title X funding cuts, according to a recent Planned Parenthood report. Rather than giving up abortion offerings, abortion providers like Planned Parenthood are closing clinics across the country. Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the defunding “cruel.” Community health centers, meanwhile, vastly outnumbered Planned Parenthood locations in the U.S., according to a report by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute. There are “more than 8,800 community health centers that provide comprehensive care to vulnerable populations and offer women’s health services, in comparison to just 579 Planned Parenthood centers as of spring 2025,” a Charlotte Lozier Institute report reads.
The Pillar
Leo poised to grant ‘generous’ exemptions to Traditionis custodes
By The Pillar, November 14, 2025
Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendía, apostolic nuncio to Great Britain, gave a recent address to the plenary assembly of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, informing the bishops that the Vatican would “be generous” when asked to dispense from the restrictions to the traditional liturgy, a senior cleric told The Pillar. According to one source present for the address, the nuncio explained that while Pope Leo is “not minded to change [Traditionis custodes], but as there are many different rites in the Church, there’s no reason to exclude the TLM.” While pastors of parishes would still need the approval of their bishops to offer the extraordinary form in parish churches, and diocesan bishops still need to apply to the Dicastery for Divine Worship for permission, “Leo will ask Cardinal Arthur [Roche, prefect of the dicastery] to be generous,” said the archbishop.
CatholicVote
Border czar responds to bishops’ statement on deportations
By Mary Rose Hokanson, November 14, 2025
Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, responded to the nation’s bishops this week after they issued a statement in solidarity with migrant families who they said live in fear of “indiscriminate mass deportation.” The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved the statement by a vote of 216–5 at its Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore, Maryland. “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people,” the message stated. “So according to them,” Homan said when a reporter asked about the bishops’ statement, “the message to the world is: if you cross the border illegally, which is a crime, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it because we shouldn’t have mass deportations. I’m saying it not only as the Border Czar, I’ll say it as a Catholic, I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church.”
Related: The US Bishops Have a Message on Immigration. But Will Anyone Listen? - National Catholic Register, by Jonathan Liedl, November 13, 2025
National Catholic Register
The Antichrist novel ‘Lord of the World’ predicted our times
By K.V. Turley, November 13, 2025
In 2015, on a flight back to the Vatican from the Philippines, Pope Francis told journalists: “There is a book … it is called Lord of the World. The author is Benson … I suggest you read it. Reading it, you’ll understand well what I mean by ideological colonization.” He went on to describe the novel as prophetic, especially in regard to modern developments such as secularism, relativism, and the notion of “progress.” Lord of the World (1907), a dystopian, apocalyptic novel by English convert Father Robert Hugh Benson, foresees a 21st-century world in which Christianity has largely declined while secular humanism — or “Humanitarianism” — has seized power. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger also cited Lord of the World in a lecture in Milan in February 1992. Pope Leo XIV, as Cardinal Robert Prevost, recommended Benson’s novel, saying it warns of what could happen to a world without faith.
The Times of Israel
No to UN/Trump resolution on Gaza plan is a vote for Hamas, war
By ToI Staff, Jacob Magid, November 15, 2025
The UN Security Council will vote Monday on a resolution endorsing US President Donald Trump’s comprehensive Gaza ceasefire plan, diplomats said Saturday, as Washington warned of a “real human cost” if the body doesn’t back the proposal. US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said failure to endorse the plan, which would deliver Gaza to an International Stabilization Force (ISF) and an apolitical Palestinian administration overseen by a Trump-chaired Board of Peace, amounted to support for Hamas and for war. “Any refusal to back this resolution is a vote either for the continued reign of Hamas terrorists or for the return to war with Israel, condemning the region and its people to perpetual conflict,” wrote Waltz in the Washington Post on Friday.
Catholic World Report
A confusing culture of casual sex, but no casual dating.
By Dr. Randall B. Smith, November 15, 2025
Dating is a form of courtship, and the one thing young adults report is that they’re not ready for kids and not ready for marriage. Thus, “getting serious” is out of the question. So what would dating be for, then? If not courtship, its sole remaining purpose would be as a precursor to a sexual hookup. So little casual dating is because of the widespread presumption that a date is supposed to lead to casual sex. Thus, if you’re the type of person who isn’t interested in casual sex—and studies suggest that, more and more, young people aren’t—then you probably shy away from “dates” with all the baggage that might come along with it. One should expect that, even if people get married at 25 or 30, many marriages will fail. And that is what we find. A culture that spends years trying to prepare its young people for jobs, but almost no time preparing them for the responsibilities of marriage and family, should expect exactly what we have.
CRUX
Leo wasn’t contradicting John Paul II on ‘pro-life’
By John L. Allen Jr., November 7, 2025
Recently, Pope Leo caused a ruckus among American Catholics by saying the death penalty and immigration are “pro-life” issues alongside abortion. By extension, he also suggested that the lone yardstick for measuring a Catholic politician’s pro-life commitment cannot be his or her voting record on abortion. The consternation was especially pronounced among the cohort in the American church, which has been raised, for more than two generations now, on the idea that Catholic identity is primarily about opposition to abortion. Some charged Leo had espoused a novelty which began under Pope Francis, in opposition to previous popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. However, a broader understanding of what it means to be pro-life is actually among the numerous points that unite the last four popes, as opposed to the relatively rare matters that divide them. St. John Paul II is the classic example.
Related: Leo’s comments and public opinion data demonstrate the challenge of defining what it means to identify as pro-life, by Anne Whitesell, Miami University, November 10, 2025
Vatican News
Pope Leo XIV gifts 62 indigenous artefacts to Canadian Bishops
By Vatican News, November 15, 2025
The Pope has gifted the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) sixty-two artefacts belonging to the ethnological collections of the Vatican Museums. According to the joint statement of the Holy See and the CCCB, this is an act of ecclesial sharing, with which the Successor of Peter entrusts to the Church in Canada these artefacts, which bear witness to the history of the encounter between faith and the cultures of the indigenous peoples. The artifacts are part of the patrimony received on the occasion of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition of 1925, which was encouraged by Pope Pius XI during the Holy Year. Sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries between 1923 and 1925, these artefacts were subsequently combined with those of the Lateran Ethnologic Missionary Museum, which then became the “Anima Mundi” Ethnological Museum of the Vatican Museums.
Big Pulpit, CNA & ChurchPOP for 11/15/25
Big Pulpit
Tito Edwards Catholic site: November 15, 2025
The Big Pulpit website is a news aggregator that gathers quality insights and analysis on the Catholic Church worldwide.
Pregnant A Week After Praying To Padre Pio – Mary O’Regan at Mary’s Blog
US Priests Remain Conservative but Diverge from Trump – S.A. McCarthy at American Spectator
An ‘Oorah!’ to the Classic Learning Test: U.S. Service Academies Adopt CLT! – Wall Street Journal
Why Aren’t Students Reading Books? – Daniel Buck at National Review
Catholic News Agency
CNA’s top headlines — November 15, 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.
Respecting human dignity can align with safeguarding nation, Bishop Burbidge says - Nov 15, 2025 - By Tessa Gervasini - Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, said the country can simultaneously protect its borders and treat immigrants with respect.
Vatican-set thriller based on true story set to begin filming in 2026 - Nov 15, 2025 - By Francesca Pollio Fenton - “Santo Subito!” will follow Father Joseph Murolo, an American priest asked by the Vatican to serve as the “devil’s advocate.”
St. Albert the Great: The Church and science are in harmony - Nov 15, 2025 - By Daniel Burke - A pioneer of the natural sciences — both empirical and philosophical, Albert’s teachings on nature and theology were revolutionary. He captured the attention of a young and taciturn Dominican — St. Thomas Aquinas.
ChurchPOP Trending
ChurchPOP provides fun, informative, and authentically Catholic news and culture - November 15, 2025
‘A Spirit All on Fire’: A Little-Known 15th-Century Saint’s Terrifying Vision of Purgatory - The man looked like “a spirit all on fire, resembling incandescent metal.”
Katie McGrady: Pope Leo’s LIVE Digital Q&A with Teens Could Inspire U.S. Vocations - “Can you imagine teenage guys and gals sitting in a football stadium talking to the Pope?”
A Priest’s Powerful Message for Every Tired Mom: ‘In Your Exhaustion, God is Ready to Love You’ - “Are you allowing the Lord to just love you in your
Nutshell reflections for 11/15/25:
USCCB Daily Reflection: AUDIO - November 15, 2025
Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Aleteia
When we sit and hear a ‘less than’ homily
By Theresa Civantos Barber, November 15, 2025
I’ve visited hundreds of churches around the world, and not even a handful of homilies have left me without insightful takeaways. But every now and then, and for many different reasons, it happens, and we encounter a homily that doesn’t quite speak to us. (While priests are an instrument of the Holy Spirit, they are obviously people just like us, and we all can have off days!) The Church teaches us that homilies are intended to help us understand Scripture readings and apply them to our lives, so that we may become more like Christ. But sometimes we don’t find that kind of preaching. I reached out to some of the best preachers I know and asked them what they wish the “people in the pews” could know about homilies. What they said surprised me, humbled me, and gave me a renewed appreciation for our great priests.
Matt Fradd’s Terrifying Ruminations
What to do with interruptions
by Mother St. Paul, (†1940)
Jesus is preaching, and He is interrupted. What does he do? Shows, as He had shown so clearly before, when He was only twelve years old, that His “Father’s business” must come first ... “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me;... and he that taketh not up his cross and followeth Me is not worthy of Me” (Mt 10:37-38). Incidentally, He shows us what we may do with our interruptions. We are so prone to let them worry us, to think that they spoil our work, to say: “But for these endless interruptions, I could do so much more!’ If we cannot always follow His example literally by making the interruption a direct help to our work, we can always make it help indirectly by taking it as a message from God, who would give His apostle an opportunity of practicing patience, self-control, and self-repression.
Our Sunday Visitor
Oscar Wilde ran toward the Church, then away from it, and back
By Sally Read, November 14, 2025
On a visit to Florence in 1881, the Irish writer Oscar Wilde stumbled upon the Annunciation of the Mother of God, a Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Uffizi Gallery. His expectations were upended. Wilde knew the scriptural story. As a dramatist, Wilde also knew how God could have had it play out. Throughout his life, Oscar Wilde ran toward the Church, then away from it. On one occasion, he failed to turn up to his own reception into the Church, sending a box of altar lilies to the priest in his stead. Wilde’s poem Ave Maria, Gratia Plena seems to tell us that God will catch up with us in the stillness of anywhere when we, even inadvertently, leave the door open to him. On his deathbed, Wilde, against all expectation, was finally received into the Church and allowed this mighty stillness to take him home.
Caeli
Finding solace in Christ, the Prince of Peace
By Grace Hannon, September 19, 2025
Why were the places and hobbies that were normally so relaxing and invigorating marred by worry? Why did I leave feeling as disoriented as before? But then it hit me, a thought that drowned my desperation and stilled my mental flailing: Christ, the Prince of Peace, is the summit of every search, the answer to any question, and the shore of still waters. I knew these words from John 16:33: “I have told you this so that you might have peace in me” (emphasis added). Apparently, what I knew deep down had been hovering in my head without penetrating my heart. That summer, I was reminded of the call to know, in our hearts as well as our heads, that only Christ provides true, lasting peace. Anywhere else we search will provide only a fabrication, a fleeting relief.
Image of Coconut by Celio Nicoli from Pixabay
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