measure our cause. He is a Western bishop, a Latin as we are, and our own Patriarch. It is not difficult for us to be loyal. The fact that the constitution of the Church gives the first place to our Patriarch is no doubt an honour for us; but it would ill beseem us to boast of this before Uniates. Let us rather understand that their loyalty is all the more splendid just because it is less easy for them. We take up the long quarrel between East and West, on the Western side, without difficulty, because we are Westerns. The Uniates are on our side, although they themselves are Easterns. They honour us, and are in communion with us, rather than with their schismatical countrymen, although externally we are further from them than the schismatics. They do this because of their loyalty to the Catholic ideal. Of all people, we who profit by their loyalty should be the first to appreciate it.
So let this be clear. We have no reason to reproach the Uniates, no right to the faintest sense of superiority over them, no right to suggest that they would be in any way better or more Catholic if they turned Latin. They might just as well invite us to turn Uniate of some rite. Let us realize that we all stand on exactly the same footing as fellow-citizens of the same kingdom of God on earth, and let us revere with special honour those who stand by this ideal under the greatest difficulties.
- 5. The Holy See and the Uniates.
In order now to show that if there has been any prejudice against the Uniates among Latins it is not the fault of the Holy See, in order to establish that the ideas described above are those of the chief authority of the Catholic Church, we will quote some general pronouncements of Popes about the Uniate Churches.
That our fellow-Catholics of Eastern rites deserve all honour; that their position is absolutely correct and unassailable; that all Latins have to do is to honour, and, if necessary, protect their venerable rites, this has been declared in the plainest language, over and over again, by the Popes.
The attitude of the Holy See that nothing need be, nothing should be, changed in the rites which Eastern Christians inherit from their fathers, so long as in all essential points of faith and morals they agree with the Catholic Church, is shown at the very outset of the great schism. Before the schism of Photius, during the Iconoclast persecution in the East (eighth and ninth centuries), a great number of image-worshippers,
