The Catholic World, Vol. 03, April to September, 1866

{iv}
In the year 1841, the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal dioceses of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, professing to speak in the name of their church in the United States, addressed the following language to the schismatical Patriarch of Constantinople, whom they style the venerable and right reverend father in God the Patriarch of the Greek Church, resident at Constantinople:
We may possibly hereafter discuss more at large some of these important subjects relating to the Eastern Church and the schism which has desolated its fairest portions for so many centuries. On this occasion we intend merely to throw a little light on the present actual condition of the patriarchate of Constantinople, in order to dissipate any illusion that may have been created by high-sounding words, and to show how little reason there is to turn with hope to the spiritual head of the Oriental Church for any enlightening or sanctifying influences upon the souls which are astray from the fold of St. Peter. We waive, for the time, all consideration of past events, anterior to the period of Turkish domination, and all discussion of the remote circumstances which have brought the See of Constantinople into its present state of degradation, and of obstinate secession from the unity of the Church.
We take it as we find it, under the Mohammedan dominion, and will endeavor to show how it stands in relation to other churches of the East, and what are its claims on the respect and honor of Western Christians.
We will first give a sketch of the line of conduct they have pursued in relation to ecclesiastical matters, and afterward of their administration of their civil authority.
In their attitude toward the Catholic Church and the Holy See, the hierarchy of the patriaichate are ignorantly, violently, and obstinately schismatical, and even heretical. The public and official teaching of the Eastern Church is orthodox, and therefore no one is adjudged to be a heretic simply because he adheres to that communion. One who intelligently and obstinately adheres to a schism as a state of permanent separation from the See of St. Peter, is, however, at least a constructive heretic, and is very likely to be a formal heretic, on several doctrines which have been defined by the Catholic Church. The nature of the opposition of the clergy of Constantinople to the Roman Church, the grounds on which they defend their contumacious rebellion, and the dogmatic arguments which they employ in the controversy, are such as to place them in the position of the most unreasonable and contumacious schismatics, and as it appears to our judgment, in submission to that of more learned theologians, of heretics also. So far as their influence extends, and it is very great, they are chiefly accountable for the isolated condition of the entire non-united Eastern Church. As the ambition of the Patriarch of Constantinople was the original cause of the schism, so now the ignorant and violent obstinacy of the clergy of the patriarchate, and their supreme devotion to their own selfish and narrow personal and party interests, is, in connection with a similar though less odious spirit in the chief Muscovite clergy, and the worldly policy of the Russian czar, the chief cause of its perpetuation.