Baby Bust Blues

originally published at Live Action News, 3/10/21 Already suffering from years of declining birth rates, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have struck an additional blow against American fertility. CBS News reports provisional data showing United States birth rates dropped 4.4% overall last December, nine months after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Some individual states saw much steeper declines, including […]

On Bishops and Bellyachers

I was in the grocery store when I snapped. It was two months into lockdown. As an immune-compromised person, I’d begun my Coronavirus journey cautiously—staying in, and wearing an N-95 mask if I had to go out. My roommate had been shopping for the items we were unable to get delivered. So it’d been some time since I’d experienced the […]

The Last Time I Slow-Danced With Death

Originally published at The Stream It seemed so Providential. So heaven-sent. So meant to be. And perhaps it was. Perhaps I will never really know for sure. What I do know is, when I saw her email sitting in my inbox, my heart skipped a beat. My article on ancient child sacrifice and the modern abortion epidemic, in which I’d […]

Child Sacrifice in the COVID-19 Era

Originally published at OnePeterFive “It’s very difficult for us to recapture people’s motivations for carrying out this practice … Perhaps it was out of … a sense that the good the sacrifice could bring the family or community as a whole outweighed the life of the child.” — Dr. Josephine Quinn, on Carthaginian ritual infant sacrifice “The reasons and need […]

The Saint, The Sinner, and the Wrath of God

originally published at OnePeterFive Sunday was my thirteenth day in coronavirus quarantine. I must confess that, although I have done some liturgical sewing and have spent more time than usual exercising, cooking, and praying, most of this precious downtime has slipped by without anything of note transpiring.  But Sunday was different. My church—a small Melkite parish—has been moved from its […]