It would seem most reasonable on the basis of preserving the constitution of Catholic antiquity, that there should be four Catholic Eastern Patriarchs, those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, under the supreme authority of the Chief Patriarch at Rome. Each of these Eastern Patriarchs would then have his own territory and his own rite. Every Catholic native of the territory of a given Patriarch would obey him and follow his rite.
If Eastern Christendom had developed normally without schisms, no doubt this is what would now be the case. It might still be held up as the theoretical ideal. But practical reasons have prevented this ideal from being carried out. Instead we have an involved system, which reflects the state of things among the schismatics. Namely, at various periods certain members of schismatical Churches have returned to the Catholic Church. In each case there was a group coming out of certain surroundings, used to certain rites and customs. These groups, even in becoming Catholic, brought with them their old feeling of being a special "nation." Often they could not easily do away with their inherited prejudices against their old rival "nations."[1] What, then, was the central authority of the Church at Rome to do? What they did was this: they reformed anything in the rite or custom of the converts which seemed really opposed to any essential point of Catholic faith or practice, otherwise they left them, as far as possible, as they were. In particular, they left the members of each "nation," however little justification there may have been for its original formation, as a special group, forming a Catholic "nation" in each case, to correspond to the schismatical one from which it came. Each of these Catholic groups was given a Catholic Patriarch corresponding to the schismatical Patriarch whose allegiance the converts had thrown off.
This produced a number of Patriarchs within the Catholic Church for which there was no precedent in antiquity. But already, long before the conversion of the Uniate bodies, the old ideal of one Patriarch for each see in the East had disappeared. So we have, as we have seen, a Catholic group or "nation" corresponding to each schismatical group. The many Catholic Patriarchs in the East do not correspond to the old four Eastern Patriarchs, but rather the number of Patriarchs, and alleged Patriarchs, who arose through later schisms and heresies.
- ↑ For instance, in Syria there is still a good deal of rivalry between Melkites and Maronites, though they are in communion with each other. See p. 202.
