brought the faith at Ephesus and Corinth, the children of the men of Antioch who first were called by the name in which we all glory. And we need, too, the righter balance that would be restored by reunion with the Orthodox. In spite of our loyalty to our own rite, and in spite of our natural pride in being not only Catholics but Latins and members of the greatest Patriarchate, we have to realize that the Latin Church is not, has never been, the whole Body of Christ. We may forget the Uniates (it is a shameful injustice to them if we do), but we could not forget one hundred millions of Catholics of other rites. And we need their ideas, their traditions and spirit in the Church as well as our own. Their conservatism now means only fossilization; joined to our life it would be a sane and useful balance. Their love of the liturgy and dislike of innovations has something to teach our people. If we regret the too sudden way in which new devotions spread amongst us, the gradual divorce of the people from the real rites of the Church, the slight regard paid to her seasons, the exaggeration of pious fancies above the old and essential things, the abuses in such matters as indulgences, privileges, and special favours against which the Council of Trent spoke,[1] we should find the remedy of all these things in the solid piety and the unchanging loyalty towards the customs of their fathers among Eastern Christians.
And then what a vast body we should make together. Our millions joined to theirs would form indeed a mighty and compact world-Church, before which the new sects would count as almost nothing. One conceives the union of the five Patriarchs stretching across Europe as the most glorious realization of the City of God on earth; and if one remembers all the sheep that are not of this fold regretfully, if one prays that all some day may be brought back to the one fold and the one Shepherd, one thinks then of none with so much sympathy as our brothers across the Adriatic. For with them practically nothing is wrong but the schism. In the case of others, one sees so much that would have to be changed—false doctrine, reckless mutilation of the old faith, and rival conventicles. But the Eastern schism has still left us on both
