"That's the Largest Portrait of the Pope I've Ever Seen"

Joel Araujo
August 2, 2009

READING: excerpts from a letter from Arius of Alexandria to Eusbus of Nicomedia.

To that most beloved man of God, the faithful and orthodox Eusebius, from Arius, unjustly persecuted by father Alexander because of the all-conquering truth which you, Eusebius, also are defending!
Since my father Ammonius is going to Nicomedia, it seemed reasonable and proper to greet you through him, remembering at the same time the innate love and affection which you have for the brothers on account of God and his Christ, because the bishop [Alexander] is severely ravaging and persecuting us and moving against us with every evil.  Thus he drives us out of every city like godless men, since we will not agree with his public statements  
Since Eusebius, your brother in Caesarea, and all those in the East say that God pre-exists the Son without a beginning, they have been condemned.
We are not able to listen to these kinds of impieties, even if the heretics threaten us with ten thousand deaths.  But what do we say and think and what have we previously taught and do we presently teach?  — that the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of an unbegotten entity in any way, nor from anything in existence, but that he is subsisting in will and intention before time and before the ages, full <of grace and truth,> God, the only-begotten, unchangeable.
Before he was begotten, or created, or defined, or established, he did not exist.  For he was not unbegotten.   But we are persecuted because we have said the Son has a beginning but God has no beginning.  We are persecuted because of that and for saying he came from non-being.  But we said this since he is not a portion of God nor of anything in existence.  That is why we are persecuted; you know the rest.

SERMON: "That’s the Largest Portrait of the Pope I’ve Ever Seen”

The Portrait was huge. At least 5 ft. x 3ft. and took up the majority of the wall next to the library’s check out desk. The portrait was that of the late Pope John Paul II. He is sitting at a desk, in all his popely robes, staring at any passerby that was unfortunate enough to gaze upon him.

I say unfortunate because while the fact that the portrait was life-size is scary enough, it was the facial expression that John Paul II had that made me feel ill at ease. In my opinion the Pope either looked, at the very least, highly disappointed, or, at the very most, extremely angry with the person looking at him. I must admit when I first viewed this visage I was taken aback. I felt he knew that I was a Unitarian, and that I was a theological alien within his midst, and that I’d eventually be found out. Throughout my academic career at the College of Mount St. Joseph (also known simply as The Mount) I never fully became comfortable with that portrait. My thoughts on the faith tradition he represented, however, changed dramatically in the subsequent three years.

My first impressions of the Roman Catholic Church originated in the Unitarian one, by various former Catholics that had rarely a good word to say about their previous denomination. The consensus was that the Catholic Church stifled free though. In addition it also rigidly imposes arcane doctrines that have nothing to do with the real world. It is the religion of another time and place, not having anything to do with the here and the now.

What I discovered both allayed my apprehensions but also reinforced some preconceptions. The presumption that Catholic theology is transfixed on the past is partially correct. It’s a fact that I have grown to deeply respect, mostly because it forced me to focus on my own Christology. More on that in a minute. Another point of respect is that most of the other Catholics that I talked to have a sense of this history. It’s commonplace within Christendom in this day and age to believe that Christian history originated at the time that single individuals were “born again” and everything previous to that was mere prologue. Catholics, on the other hand, have a distinct feeling of legacy that know is much more vast and deep than their own spiritual history.

In my Church History and Christology classes I learned that The Catholic Church’s own spiritual tenants about Jesus were being shaped and created at about the same time that ours was. The theologian Athanasius had a doctrine of Jesus as 100% God and 100% human simultaneously. This was in direct competition with the thoughts of Arius of Alexandria, who preached that Jesus was 100% and absolutely human, not a mere human, however but an exemplar human who was divinely inspired. These two, highly popular but opposing viewpoints were threatening to tear the Christian world apart.

In 325 C.E. Emperor Constantine I called and ecumenical meeting of all Christian bishops to the city of Nicaea to end the debate once and for all. Constantine personally backed Athanasius, so it’s little wonder that his Christology was established as the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church and eventually the Christian norm. Arius’ view of a completely human Jesus was deemed unholy and heretical. Arius’ followers were subsequently exiled from the Roman Empire and eventually migrated to current day Romania where they could worship away from oppression of the Empire.

Sound familiar? If it does you probably have at least a passing knowledge of our denomination’s Partner Church Program that helps Romanian Unitarian Churches by pairing them with their affluent U.S. counterparts. I believe this program is very important in our faith because it helps link us to our history.

The more and more I read about the Arian view of Jesus, in that uncomfortable library, the more and more I found I identified with it as my own experience. By stripping away the supernatural and focusing on his life and teachings I came to understand that the philosophies of this wandering Jewish Rabbi parallel my own. During my time at The Mount I found that Jesus’ radical tenants of peace, unyielding love, and striving to bring the Kingdom of God to this world resonated with my soul. I always thought that I was born all right the first time, however learning about the human Jesus brought me to a place in my heart that I always knew.
In addition to this by being able to explain and articulate the origins of my own denomination the Roman Catholics were able to better understand Unitarian Universalism as it is now. We are currently creedless because the first one left a bad taste in our mouth. We commend independent minded people because that is our heritage.

What I also learned is that this sense of history I talked about previously also sets a precedent in the Catholic Church’s stance on current issues. This is what they call the “ongoing revelation of The Church” For brevity’s sake I’ll briefly talk about two issues:
One issue that curiously both Unitarians and Catholics agree is the use of reason and empirical science to understand the world around us. For example, both denominations accept and embrace the Theory of Evolution. In the International Theological Commission’s letter Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God the Catholic Church firmly states that, as long as the person ultimately believes that God is the originator of all life, than that person also has the freedom to accept any reasonable explanation as to how that life changed and matured throughout the eons. In other words, God might have put evolution into motion in order to finally arrive at a vertebrate mammal that just so happens to be created in his image.

One area in which Catholics and Unitarians are at a pointed disagreement is that of same-sex marriage. During the period of Vatican II Pope Paul VI released the Encyclical letter Hamanae Vitae. While its focus specifically was on birth control, the doctrines it states touch upon a great number of issues in human sexuality. According to Humanae Vitae the twofold ends of marriage is the true mutual love of the spouses and the spouses calling to parenthood (otherwise known as the unitive and procreative ends).

Catholics, unlike many evangelical denominations, do not believe that homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle. In his pastoral message Always our Children The Pope acknowledges that homosexuality is an internal orientation and totally non-voluntary. Homosexuals therefore should be treated with kindness and respect, and be given the sacrament of the Eucharist, just like any other member of the flock. Unfortunately, while this understanding compels to Catholics agree that, while marriage between homosexuals satisfies the unitive end of marriage, it cannot, in their opinion, satisfy the procreative end, and children should only be created in marriage. In other words in order to live lives that is agreeable to God homosexuals can accept and embrace their identity, but they must never act upon it, living lives of what the letter states as one of “chastity, modesty and self-control”

Please understand, I am by no means even attempting to be an apologist for the Catholic Church. I have been a proponent of gay marriage since my days as a youth, I think that a person must responsibly act on their sexuality in order to be fully whole, and stressed the 2nd principle during class discussions. What I am attempting to stress is that I was forced into a mode of communication during my time at The Mount that I absolutely wouldn’t enter into otherwise. The dialogue during class that that communication fostered led to an understanding between us. I knew that Catholicism isn’t unchanging history in religious form, and they knew that I didn’t come from some ‘free-thought’ denomination that started in the New-Age era.

Ultimately it was that understanding that I took away as my most precious gift from The Mount. For it is through understanding that we gain respect, one of life’s most awesome and elusive emotions. It is through respect that trust is earned, and by earning trust we are able to strive for a more harmonious world, what the very human Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

Just a few months ago I was ending my time at The Mount, as I was working on my Senior Capstone and various other papers, I would see that portrait more often. While I still think his facial expression is one of constant displeasure, I no longer have the same knee jerk reaction that I had when I began. Instead of simply and easily avoiding his gaze, I want to look into his intense eyes and I want to learn why they are so.