47. It remains to discuss the final enquiry about fasting. Syrian and Armenian Catholics abstain from fish on fast days in accordance with their rite. But when they see the Latins eating fish, it is claimed that it is impossible or at least very hard for them to refrain from fish. So the seemingly reasonable suggestion is made that missionaries should be empowered to give them a dispensation with circumspection and without risk of scandal, and to substitute another pious work for abstinence from fish.

This would be an ideal place to deal with the antiquity of fasting in the east and of how its obligations have always been strictly observed despite their severity. To avoid excessive length, however, We confine Ourselves to saying that the Apostolic See has always opposed the Patriarchs whenever they wanted to relax the ancient harshness of the fast imposed on their subjects. Peter the Maronite Patriarch permitted the archbishops and bishops subject to him to eat meat as the laity did although the ancient practice had them abstain from meat. He allowed his entire people to eat fish and drink wine in Lent although this had been forbidden to them. But Pope Paul V wrote a Brief to the Patriarch who succeeded Peter on March 9, 1610, commanding him to restore the earlier state of affairs by revoking the concessions of Patriarch Peter.

During Our own pontificate the excessive good-natured laxity of Euthymius, Archbishop of Tyre and Sidon, and of Cyril Patriarch of Antioch, towards the Greek Melchites was investigated and condemned (constitution 87, Demandatam, sect. 6). "Judging that this innovation and relaxation of rigorous abstinence tends to the excessive harm of the ancient practice of the Greek churches, even though these measures have no force without the authority of the Apostolic See, We expressly revoke them by Our authority. We command that they should have no effect for the future nor be implemented in any way, but that everything should be restored to its former condition. Moreover, We order that the praiseworthy custom of your fathers of abstaining from fish every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year be observed in all the Patriarchate of Antioch, just as it is practiced among the neighboring peoples of the Greek rite."

It is nonsensical to affirm that a dispensation, or rather a general faculty of dispensing, should be granted on the grounds that Orientals are easily tempted to eat fish themselves by the sight of Latins eating fish on a fast day, yielding to the weakness of their nature and not from contempt. For if this argument were at all persuasive it would lead to an absolute mixture of rites. A further result would be that Latins at the sight of Greeks living in ways which are forbidden to Latins could seek a dispensation to allow them to do what they see the Greeks doing. They would claim that they accepted the Latin rite, but that from the weakness of their nature they could no longer observe it.