Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

The Exigency of Truth. 21
And admitting that these secondary truths
O */
are thus balanced and controlled by other truths
and varying circumstances, it must be said that
we have relations with the Eastern Church
which would render any re-union of ours,
irrespective of it, probably very wrong. It will
of course at once be said your immediate concern
is with your own Patriarch, and with him alone
/ /
you have no right or occasion to allude to
those who belong to another division of
Christendom. Unconsciously, those who uphold
the extreme Roman claim here disown it in the act
of urging such an ob j ection . The Roman C hurch
does not admit of the Eastern Patriarchates
in the sense in which the phrase is here used.
If is Constantinople one of the Patriarchates,
"
Rome is another, and thereby ceases to be the
mother and mistress of all Churches." If she
be so in truth then is Cardinal Patrizi justified
"
in calling the Orthodox Communion schisma
Photianum" in the letter before noticed. And
then we too are in precisely the same position,
and are free to act with the Easterns, without
any consideration of the Pope as our special
Patriarch. You must either adopt one position
or the other. Either the Patriarchal system is
a reality, and Rome s position with respect to
Christendom indefensible, or it is not a reality,
and therefore we have no duties owing to her as
standing in that peculiar relation to us.