Ken Trainor

Based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, the new film Conclave is about the traditional gathering of cardinals (red hats, not redbirds) to pick a new pope. It has garnered an aggregate score of 92% from critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website (and an 85% audience rating, which goes by the new moniker “popcornmeter”). Here is the critics’ consensus, distilled to one sentence: “Carrying off papal pulp with immaculate execution and career-highlight work from Ralph Fiennes, Conclave is a godsend for audiences who crave intelligent entertainment.”

When a clown moves into a palace, he does not become a king.

It has never been harder to feel thankful than this November, but life is never all downside, even when most of it feels bad. I’m thankful that there are two kinds of suffering, and one leads to less suffering. I will be forever grateful if that is the case.

We just lost the latest battle in our seemingly endless Culture War — which has been ongoing since America developed the two-party system in 1796, as Americans have struggled through an almost uninterrupted succession of cultural conflicts. So says author Stephen Prothero in his 2016 book, Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars – Even When They Lose Elections.

O come, O come, Emanuel, and ransom captive Israel … Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadow put to flight …

Last Saturday, Christmas paid a visit. You never know when it’s going to show up. All you can do is create the conditions. Sometimes Christmas just needs an invitation. First I drove out and picked up my two most reliable seasonal collaborators, the boys whom Christmas seems to follow around most of the year. Halloween […]

Something out of the ordinary, to make them abandon their cloistered courts

It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.

Nations make mistakes. Hopefully they learn from them. When we elected Donald Trump the first time, we f***ed up — in a big way. Electing Trump a second time is altogether different. It means we didn’t learn our lesson.

With the Second Coming at hand (the Kingdom of Trump) — government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires — this is a good time to revisit, revise, reset, and reboot just about everything we hold dear and sacred. As a writer, I’m a proponent of revising. I have long wanted to rewrite the Catholic Mass, along with our country’s weak system of checks and balances, and nearly all of our traditional Christmas carols.