The Alexandrian

Near the end of the movie “Batman Begins,” Bruce Wayne (a.k.a. Batman) faces the ruins of his family estate and decides to rebuild it, brick for brick. Looking at our heritage of Catholic writing and art, I think we can make the same decision: remember the beautiful and good things we had for so long, and make them a reality once again.

And, just as his butler reminded him, this is an excellent opportunity to make some improvements on the foundation. Our foundation is, of course, our faith.

God bless, and I’ll have the new issue up soon – possibly tomorrow!

Happy Dominion Day, everyone! I hope you have a wonderful day. It’s a good opportunity to think about how wonderful our country is: our resources, our Catholic history, the beauty of nature and our cities, our economic prosperity. It’s also a time to face our challenges, now when our freedoms and rights – especially freedom of speech and the right to life – are being questioned and opposed.

However, the Alexandrian’s purpose is not so much to raise awareness of bad things going on in the world, but to encourage and initiate the good. On that note, submissions for our summer issue will close after today, so email me if you still want to get in!

I’m sorry I’m not blogging as much as I have been; I’m working on this next issue. However, our movie rental place is having a liquidation sale, so I hope to comment in the future on several movies, including how evil is portrayed in Casablanca, and how Batman and Bourne reflect the priesthood… Until then, I’ll leave up some photos that remind me of Canada’s beauty.

So, we have just under a week to continue receiving submissions, which are due on July 1st. If you have a story idea, poem, piece of artwork or philosophy paper on either time or eternity, please consider sending it in! We’re working hard to get the next issue looking good.

The fall issue has the theme of “Work,” and I’m considering “Poverty, Chastity and Obedience” as the winter theme: it would give authors and artists a bit more room to explore, because they could choose from three different themes. After all, poverty is one of the classic themes of philosophy; poetry often deals with chastity, or the lack thereof, and there are many short stories that deal with obedience, especially obeying God. However, feel free to suggest a better, or a theme you’d like to work with in the spring issue!

By the way, I don’t have the time (or bandwidth) to read a ton of blogs, so it generally takes me a while to find the really good ones – hence the short list on the left. If you have any recommended links, please tell me. I probably just don’t know about the blog. I don’t want to link to polarizing blogs, especially those critical of the Faith or the Magisterium, and it would be best if they have a cultural or Canadian focus.

We are planning a poetry workshop this August for all those interested in Catholic poetry in Canada – it will probably be in Toronto, and we’re still deciding the date, so please get in touch if you are interested.

I am occasionally reminded why I so love The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Ontario, Canada.

Imagine this, with the smell of new-cut hay on a warm day with a cool breeze, and die of envy, city folk.

I love the intensity of the colours, and the peacefulness of large, open fields.

At the same time, there is enough variation – though it doesn’t show, there are rolling hills, and one finds both deciduous and coniferous bush, as well as swamp.

It can be kind of hard to answer some questions about vocations. Whether there is a vocation to the single life is one question especially relevant to many students and young Catholics now. Are there three vocations in life – marriage, religious life and single life – or only two? I think that we need to look at what each of these states entails before we can reach any decisions.

First of all, each of these states is directed toward a different person. Religious consecration is a union with God, and because of this, is permanent. Marriage is a union with another person, and ends when either person dies. The single life, when lived in sanctity, brings one into communion with all those one meets, but there is no specific covenantal union of persons. Because there is no specific union, it is temporary – one can leave this state by entering another at any point.

In the single life, one can definitely live for others, especially for God – this is the vocation to holiness. However, this vocation to holiness is universal, and doesn’t set apart the single state as extraordinary. Married people and religious are called to holiness as well. All three states demand heroic virtue, if they are to lead to sanctity. All demand chastity – though the single state and [ordinarily] the religious state demand celibacy, while marriage [generally] does not. At the same time, it is interesting to note that covenantal unions are generally epitomized by a sexual gift of self – either in celibacy, to God, or in faithful married love to one’s spouse. A person living a chaste single life reserves this gift.

Religious life and married life seem to balance each other: one is supernatural, the other natural. For this reason, it seems superfluous to posit the existence of a third vocation. However, not everyone is married or religious, and not everyone can become so: think of a little child who dies, through no fault of his own or his parents – God called him to holiness, definitely, but not through marriage or religious life. God does not call us to give what we cannot possess.

The vocation to the single life, then, is a call to life in general – a sort of ‘default position.’ The vocation of marriage is something more, since it continues to demand holiness and integrity in one’s dealings with everyone, as well as a faithful and loving union with one’s spouse. The vocation to consecrated religious life is the ultimate vocation, since it is a union with God Himself – it is supernatural and permanent in a way that no other vocation is. Perhaps this is partly why “vocation” immediately brings to mind the priesthood or religious life, at least in the phrase “I think I may have a vocation.”

Vocation is applied to many different callings in our lives. We are all called to holiness, and to a virtuous single life for a time. Many of us, however, also have other vocations – to marriage or religious life or both. It would be a mistake to say that these states are mutually exclusive, or that they are universal, but it is equally wrong to say that the three states of life are each vocations in the same sense.

Until recently, I thought Shakespeare would be rather too risqué, detailed, and archaic in language for children to understand. During the past year, though, we read some of his comedies to my younger siblings as they did their schoolwork, and amazingly, they picked up most of the plot, while missing the innuendo — which was less than I remembered.

The illustration is of the Comedy of Errors, by my ten-year-old sister.

If you have never been interested in middle high Germanic poetry, here is your addictive introduction to the genre. Don’t confuse it with Wagner’s opera, The Ring of the Nibelungs (Der Ring des Nibelungen) – the opera is based only very loosely on this story, which is loosely related to certain Norse legends and historical figures.

It begins by introducing Kriemhild, a beautiful princess who has decided never to get married, and Sigfrid, a prince who is heroic, noble and almost invincible. Even in the very first chapter/canto/adventure, it is predicted that Kriemhild will marry someone who will die tragically, though she is determined not to. Of course, Sigfrid hears of her, decides that she is a woman worthy of his love, and brings his best men to visit her brothers, who rule the country of the Rhine. Though Sigfrid is originally very pushy – threatening to take their country by force – he lets them befriend him, and eventually helps them out when they are attacked. Eventually, he calls on the Nibelungs, a mysterious and fabulously wealthy race of mighty warriors whom he had previously conquered. The Nibelungs, Sigfrid’s men and Kriemhild’s brothers’ kingdom seem united in common friendship.

However, Kriemhild’s brother has also decided that he wants to marry a princess famed for her beauty and disdain of men, Brunhild – who is superbly strong, as well. He asks Sigfrid’s help to woo Brunhild, and unwittingly starts a chain of events which will ultimately destroy them all.

This poem’s radically Catholic foundations show in the characters’ encounters with death and each other: they understand that they are not in control and that they are following Another’s plan in their lives, but they continue to pray and sacrifice for each other. They are held to very strict rules of chivalry and ‘fair play’ which guard charitable action, and once they begin to transgress these rules, they harm not only each other but themselves. Tension builds throughout the story as the reader is encouraged to find a good and just character, and is unable; even those who were initially reasonable (or at least excusable) become evil and bloody by the end. Often their greatest virtue becomes their downfall, when they cease to guide it through charity: Kriemhild’s extraordinary love for her husband, Hagen’s loyalty and pragmaticism, Attila’s benevolent complacency.

Ryder’s verse translation is excellent, keeping close to the original metre and avoiding the contorted grammar of so many poetic translations. Some of the lines are almost amusingly colloquial. For instance, Sigfrid puts on a magic cloak of invisibility to help Kriemhild’s brother at one point, confusing Kriemhild:

She turned to his men and said, “How very weird!
I wonder now, where could the king have gone?”

Ryder excels in his descriptions of battle, and, curiously enough, this epic poem has more than an ordinary description of practical matters in the courtly life: before Gunther, Kriemhild’s brother, goes off to woo his bride, he reminds her:

“And take good note, my lady, of what I say.
The four of us must have, for every day
Of four, three changes of clothes, in perfect taste,
Lest when we leave Brunhild’s land we go disgraced.”

The constant foreshadowing of danger and tragedy keeps the story interesting while it tells of happy years, and leads smoothly into the death and destruction of the second half. Despite the cautions, though, by the end the story becomes so bloody that one is set to wondering where it should have ended – what alternate actions would have stopped the chain of events and led to peace. It is an amazing and even enjoyable story of good people who, motivated by what they consider to be righteous anger, destroy each other and all those they love.