council should be summoned and that the successor of St. Peter should send his legates to make peace among them? And what would they say when they heard that for ten centuries their Churches had rejected the communion of the See of Peter? "Now is the acceptable time," St. Theodore might well again say, "that we should unite ourselves with Rome, the summit of the Churches of God."[1] And indeed it is an acceptable time. Never yet have the Eastern bishops stood so much in need of their natural arbitrator as now. We have seen how their independence of their chief has ended in the most servile dependence on secular governments; even the unbaptized tyrant who has robbed the Christian East of her lands and degrades the lawful heirs of those countries beneath the rabble he brought with him from Asia, even he has to step in to arrange their quarrels. Do they really think that Abdulhamid is the right man to decide what language shall be used for the Holy Liturgy, and what bishop shall reign in the old sees of Macedonia? Do they still, after having felt its weight for over three centuries, prefer his turban to the Pope's tiara? At any rate the Pope never filched their children, desecrated their churches, nor murdered their bishops. Who is ever going to make peace between Greek and Bulgar, Serb and Vlach? It will not be the Œcumenical Patriarch; he is the chief offender and the avowed leader of one side. Do the Slavs want a chief who will not try to rob them of their national feeling, forbid their language, and persecute their priests? Such a chief is waiting for them across the Albanian mountains and Adriatic Sea. Let them look at the Uniates and see how scrupulously their rites and languages are kept. Does the Patriarch himself feel the degradation of being continually deposed by his own metropolitans and by the Turkish Minister of Religions? There is a greater Patriarch, whom no bishop can feel it degrading to obey, who stands for the rights of old Canon Law, and whose honour is still in the firm strength of his brothers.[2] And for us Catholics, too, reunion would be the greatest of blessings. We want back the great sees that have stood aloof from us so long. We want the communion of the Christians to whom St. Paul
- ↑ Quoted p. 67.
- ↑ P. 39, note 4.
