Catholic Nutshell News: Thursday 11/6/25
Topics include: Alleged ‘inhumane’ detainee conditions; India's police raid Catholic seminary; Safeguard space for the common good; & Hartford archdiocese offers SNAP $500K
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Today's sources include Aleteia, CNA, National Catholic Register, The Pillar, CatholicVote, John Eldredge, and ChurchPOP. (Catholic Nutshell is a subscription service for faithful, hopeful, & curious Catholics willing to exercise the Catholic News Muscle)
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Catholic News Agency
Judge orders halt to alleged ‘inhumane’ detainee conditions
By Steven Harras, November 6, 2025
A Chicago-based federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to maintain strict cleanliness and hygiene requirements for migrants detained at an Illinois facility. The court also ordered the administration to provide detainees with access to legal representation. The temporary restraining order entered Nov. 5 by Judge Robert W. Gettleman, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, did not address the plaintiff’s concerns about a lack of religious accommodations, including the ability to receive holy Communion. Gettleman’s order Nov. 5 directed the administration to provide adequate food, water, and hygiene practices to detainees along with prescribed medications. “Plaintiffs and members of the putative class have suffered, and are likely to suffer, irreparable harm absent the temporary relief granted,” said the order, which will be in effect until a Nov. 19 status hearing.
UCA News
Indian police raid Catholic seminary over conversion allegations
By UCA News reporter, November 6, 2025
Police and senior officials in India’s Madhya Pradesh state raided a Catholic seminary following a Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar newspaper report. They questioned its students on Nov. 5 following allegations of religious conversion, amid reports of growing anti-Christian sentiment in the region. “Police arrived unannounced and demanded to conduct a search on an accusation we were involved in religious conversions,” said Father Harshal Ammaparambil, rector of St. Joseph’s Minor Seminary, which comes under Gwalior diocese. The seminary, established 25 years ago to train Catholic students for the priesthood, was searched for nearly five hours, the priest told UCA News on Nov. 6. Officers “searched every nook and cranny” and interrogated all 23 seminarians, who come from Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh states, he said. Father Pratap Toppo, the diocesan public relations officer, called the report “misleading and maligning,” saying the publication had failed to verify facts.
National Catholic Reporter
Safeguard space for the common good, says Vatican diplomat
By Gina Christian / OSV News, November 5, 2025
Outer space must be safeguarded for peaceful purposes and for the common good of humanity, stressed Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the Holy See’s U.N. apostolic nuncio and permanent observer. Speaking Oct. 27, Caccia said that while “the vastness of outer space is a realm of immense opportunity” for “cooperation and scientific discovery,” that potential also brings with it “great responsibility.” He pointed to “disturbing trends that threaten” the peaceful use of space. Among those, said Caccia, are “the ongoing threat posed by space-based weaponry, including anti-satellite systems, and the accumulation of debris in low Earth orbit,” which all “represent a genuine and grave threat to international peace, security, and the long-term sustainability of space-related activities.”
CatholicVote
Hartford archdiocese offers $500K emergency aid for SNAP
By Annie Ferguson, November 5, 2025
In response to the federal government shutdown and its impact on food assistance programs, the Archdiocese of Hartford announced this week it has released $500,000 in emergency funding to food banks across Hartford, Litchfield, and New Haven counties. The aid comes directly from the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal and was ordered by Archbishop Christopher Coyne to meet urgent needs arising from the suspension of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to a Nov. 3 press release from the archdiocese. SNAP, which serves over 42 million Americans, officially ran out of funding on Nov. 1, leaving vulnerable families scrambling for support. As CatholicVote reported, the federal administration announced a partial restoration of SNAP funds on Nov. 3. However, gaps in distribution and access remain, especially among low-income households already living week to week, and food banks are seeing an increase in demand, according to a Nov. 4 report from ABC News.
Crux
Number of Brazilians in informal unions exceeds married couples
By Eduardo Campos Lima, November 6, 2025
Unmarried partners living together in Brazil exceeded legally and religiously married couples for the first time, according to a specific part of the 2022 census released on Nov. 5 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). According to the census, in 2022, 38.9% of the Brazilian couples had cohabiting unions, while 37.9% were legally and religiously married couples. That is a significant transformation in only a couple of decades. In 2000, 49.4% of the unions had both civil and religious legitimacy, while informal relationships accounted for 28.6%. In 1970, 64.5% of the couples were married. Between 2000 and 2022, the proportion of civil marriages only (without a corresponding religious marriage) grew from 17.5% to 20.5%. The proportion of religious marriages only fell from 4.4% to 2.6%. According to the IBGE, 51.3% of Brazilians older than 10 are in a marital union.
National Catholic Register
Caution against transhumanist quest for immortality
By Jonah McKeown, November 6, 2025
Nestled within the expansive field of transhumanism — the quest to improve and enhance human beings through reason and technology — a new and high-tech effort is underway to thwart the human aging process completely. A poster child for this crusade is Bryan Johnson, a multimillionaire entrepreneur who has gained an almost cultlike following as the founder of a movement succinctly dubbed “Don’t Die.” Johnson, 48, said, “Most religions are selling a version of ‘Don’t Die,’” in an interview earlier this year. “Whereas before we had to make up stories, now, technically, it’s potentially possible.” For the past 20 years or more, gerontologist Aubrey de Grey has insisted that humans in the not-too-distant future could live for thousands of years. Several leading Catholic thinkers have cautioned that this ideology will likely prove influential in the coming decades, shaping healthcare and public policy decisions, and may necessitate adjustments in the pastoral application of the Church’s teaching on death.
The Pillar
The rise of Catholic microschools
By Jack Figge, November 5, 2025
“Microschooling was a last-ditch effort to save the school financially,” Sonia Nuñez told The Pillar. “Now, we are fully sustainable. We have gone basically from so deep in the red we almost had to close our doors, to the black now.” The small Catholic school in Long Beach, California, was on the verge of shutting down. She took out a $5,000 payroll loan, hired new staff members, and announced that the school would be switching to a microschool model — grouping multi-age students in the same classroom. Under the new model, the number of classes was reduced from 10 to five, and staffing was cut in half. Four years later, enrollment has increased by 20 students, test scores have improved dramatically, parents are more engaged, and the school ended last year with $100,000 in the bank. Microschooling is an approach for institutions with fewer than 150 students; it involves teaching students in multi-age classrooms, where teachers focus on teaching to individual students, rather than the class. The National Microschooling Center reports that there were 800 registered microschools as of May 2025.
Aleteia
Catholic law firm threatens Illinois over assisted suicide bill
By Christine Rousselle, November 6, 2025
The Thomas More Society said it would sue the state of Illinois if the governor signs a bill legalizing assisted suicide into law. They urged Gov. Jay Pritzker to veto a bill in Illinois that would legalize assisted suicide, saying the bill would trample on the religious freedom rights of healthcare providers. The Illinois Senate on October 31 passed a bill legalizing assisted suicide in the state. It now goes to Pritzker’s desk for his signature. “Doctors should never be forced to support or participate in a deadly act that violates the deepest principles of their faith and their calling to heal,” said Peter Breen, executive vice president and head of litigation at Thomas More Society in a statement provided to Aleteia. “Christian healthcare reflects a holy work, and these religious clinics and hospitals share a sacred bond with patients: those patients trust their caregivers to act in accordance with the religious principles of these institutions.”
CatholicVote, CNA & ChurchPOP for 11/6/25
CatholicVote - The Loop
Read daily news and political impact stories at the “LOOP”
Elections and politics matter. The LOOP gives you daily gems on the news that seek “to renew our country and culture.” CatholicVote’s advertised mission is “To inspire every Catholic in America to live out the truths of our faith in public life.”
ILLINOIS BISHOP: PRAY PRITZKER WILL NIX SUICIDE BILL - Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, is calling on Catholics to pray that Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker will not sign an assisted suicide bill into law. “Make no mistake: killing oneself is not dying with dignity,” Bishop Paprocki said. “Doctors take an oath to do no harm. Now, they can prescribe death.”
DC ARCHBISHOP MCELROY DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER - The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., announced yesterday that its archbishop, Cardinal Robert McElroy, has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Cardinal McElroy will undergo surgery to remove the cancer later this month, and his medical team is optimistic that he will fully recover.
STORIES THAT INSPIRED CATHOLIC REP TO DEFEND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM - Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., recently recalled what sparked his lifelong mission to defend religious freedom: reading “Tortured for Christ,” Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand’s account of underground Christians tortured under dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Catholic News Agency
CNA’s top headlines — November 6, 2025
The Catholic News Agency provides reliable, free, and up-to-the-minute news affecting the Universal Church, emphasizing the words of the Holy Father and the activities of the Holy See, available to anyone with internet access.
Fact check: Do parental notification laws for abortion harm minors? - Nov 6, 2025 - By Kate Quiñones - Human Rights Watch claims that laws requiring minors to notify their parents if they are getting an abortion “threaten young people’s health and safety and undermine their human rights,” claims a report by the Human Rights Watch. R
‘Don’t kill me’: Empty wheelchairs dramatize campaign against assisted suicide in Italy - Nov 5, 2025 - By Victoria Cardiel - An initiative by an Italian pro-life group aims to denounce what the organization considers a “drift toward assisted suicide” in Italy.
Archdiocese of Seville permits woman with Down syndrome to be a godmother - Nov 5, 2025 - By Nicolás de Cárdenas - In October, the offended family took their case to the media because a priest had refused to accept Noelia, a 19-year-old woman with Down syndrome, as a godmother.
ChurchPOP Trending
ChurchPOP provides fun, informative, and authentically Catholic news and culture - November 6, 2025
We publish inspiring daily stories, fun and shareable faith-centered infographics, prayers, Church history, and more.
The Chapel Veil is Back: 3 Beautiful Reasons Some Catholic Women Are Veiling at Mass Again - “A woman is marked by her mantilla as belonging to God. We are veiled because we belong, not to a pretentious patriarchal hierarchy, but to God.”
6 Spiritual Exercises from Saint Alphonsus Liguori Catholics Should Try Each Morning - “When you awake in the morning, your first thought should be to raise your mind to God...”
Armenia Gives Catholics a New Saint! 8 Amazing Facts About The Very First Christian Nation - Did you know Pope Leo XIV recently canonized an Armenian saint? And that this ancient country is the very first Christian nation? Here are more amazing facts about Armenia!
Nutshell reflections for 11/6/25:
USCCB Daily Reflection - AUDIO - November 6, 2025
Thursday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Church Life Journal
Aquinas and the limits of forgiveness
By Anna Moreland, November 6, 2023
When I first read Anna Karenina, the character of Dolly stayed with me, nagging me to return to her, to pay closer attention to her. When I reread the novel, I found in Dolly, the secondary character and unacknowledged heroine of Tolstoy’s novel,[1] a paradigmatic example of what it means to see the world through the eyes of self-sacrificial love. She loves those who hurt her not in a way that ignores the transgression or grief, but rather in a way that chooses love over vengeance, selflessness over selfishness. Over and over again, Dolly decides to love her philandering husband, Stiva, his wayward sister Anna, and her six children the way God loves them. I am going to suggest that Dolly is the literary exemplar of the perfection of charity. Her love exemplifies Christian heroism — a love that is difficult, if not impossible, to emulate. It is a heroism that is too often overlooked in our age, given the real risks of victim-blaming.
Imaginative Conservative
More of us are taking control of our kids’ schooling
By Joseph Woodard, November 4, 2025
We wonder if our schools are getting it wrong. Our public schools extend our kids’ adolescence into their mid-twenties, train them in political activism, and eject them into the world, too anxious to run their own lives. So, more of us are taking control of our kids’ schooling, confident that we can do at least as well as the teachers’ unions. The increasingly popular alternative to bureaucratic schools is something now known as classical or liberal education, found in private or charter schools, learning cooperatives, and growing homeschools. This past century, a classical revival, first among homeschoolers, clarified its purpose: forming young citizens, free of the coercive obsessions of the state. The young learn first by imitation (mimesis), Plato says, so they need virtuous models or icons. In his day, however, their mythical gods and heroes (like lustful Zeus) were very bad models, so the poets nurtured more hyenas than border collies.
Crisis Magazine
Gaslighting the faithful
By Andrea Madrigal, November 5, 2025
On October 12, Fr. David Carter, the pastor and rector of the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul—located in the Diocese of Knoxville, where a Vatican order has indicated that all diocesan TLMs cease by late November—gave a homily titled “Treasures New and Old,” in which he spoke about the events that have shaken the diocese. His sermon, however, was not a defense of the faithful’s liturgical rights to possess what their Catholic ancestors had given their blood for, but rather something more disturbing — his blaring misunderstanding of what obedience is. In the third paragraph of his homily. Fr. Carter states, “With humility and obedience, resisting any temptation to oppose proper ecclesial authority, we must make a choice: to be Catholic or Protestant.” Later, he once again states, “Don’t be Protestant.” To accuse someone of being a Protestant because they have the temerity to admit to what they see with their own eyes is as much a result of gaslighting as it is malicious. The only thing most TLM attendees want is to be Catholic and go to Heaven. Yet, their spiritual father is accusing them of being Protestant if they dare protest against the abuses wrought against them.
Wild at Heart
Women don’t fear a man’s strength if he is a good man
By John Eldredge, November 6, 2025
Every man wants a battle to fight. It’s the whole thing with boys and weapons. And look at the movies men love — Braveheart, Gladiator, Top Gun, High Noon, Saving Private Ryan. Men are made for battle. (And ladies, don’t you love the heroes of those movies? You might not want to fight in a war, but don’t you long for a man who will fight for you? Women don’t fear a man’s strength if he is a good man.) Men also long for adventure. Adventure is a deeply spiritual longing in the heart of every man. Adventure requires something of us, puts us to the test. Finally, every man longs for a Beauty to rescue. There is nothing that inspires a man to courage so much as the woman he loves. Now, can you see how the desires of a man’s heart and the desires of a woman’s heart were at least meant to fit beautifully together? A woman in the presence of a good man, a real man, loves being a woman.
Image of peanuts by Nicole Köhler, from Pixabay
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