19. Many inferences can be made from Our present exposition. First, the missionary who is attempting with God's help to bring back Greek and eastern schismatics to unity should devote all his effort to the single objective of delivering them from doctrines at variance with the Catholic faith. Their forefathers accepted these errors as some sort of pretext for leaving the unity of the Church and for refusing the pope the respect and obedience which is his due as head of the Church.

A missionary should make use of the following proofs. Since the Orientals are greatly devoted to their own Church Fathers, Leo Allatius and other notable theologians have studied the question carefully and have shown clearly that the more notable Fathers of the Greek and Latin Church fully agree on all points of doctrine; they specifically reject the errors which fetter the east now. Consequently the study of those books will be beneficial.

In the last century the Lutherans tried to draw Greeks and Orientals into their own errors. The Calvinists, who bitterly attack the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the transubstantiation of bread and wine into His Body and Blood, made the same attempt; it is reported that they won over the Patriarch Cyril to their view. However the Greeks, schismatic as they are, realized that the new errors were at variance with the teaching of their Fathers, especially SS. Cyril, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Damascene; with firm proofs drawn from their own liturgies which affirm the Real Presence and Transubstantiation, they rejected the deceptions and refused to abandon any aspect of the Catholic truth (see Schelestratus De perpetua consensione Orientalis Ecclesiae contra Lutheranos, the chapter De transubstantiatione, p. 717, vol. 2, of Actorum Ecclesiae Orientalis). In two synods they unanimously condemned Patriarch Cyril and the Calvinist doctrines published under his name (see Christian Lupus, ad Concilia Generalia, et Provincialia, part 5, and particularly his treatise De quibusdam locis, chap. 9, at end).

In the first place this gives substantial hope that when they are confronted with the teaching of the Fathers, which strongly supports our Catholic doctrine and attacks their own more recent errors, they will be inspired to a genuine conversion and find it very easy to return. Secondly, it can be seen that there is no need to harm or destroy their rites in recalling them to the way of unity since the Apostolic See has always opposed this procedure. This See has been able to separate the weeds from the wheat in these holy rites as often as the need arose. Moreover the attempt to destroy their rites will only jeopardize the desired union, as Thomas of Jesus rightly reflects: "It must also be shown that the Roman church approves and favors each Church maintaining its own rites and ceremonies, since of course the schismatics are very attached to their own rites. A timely effort must be made to persuade them that they will be confirmed in the observance of their own ceremonies in order to prevent any false suspicion developing that these rites would be abolished and any consequent turning away from the Roman church, which has no such objective" (De conversione omnium gentium procuranda>, bk. 7, chap. 2).

Thirdly and finally, from what has already been said it can be inferred that a missionary who wants to convert an eastern schismatic should not attempt to make him accept the Latin rite. For the only work entrusted to the missionary is that of recalling the Oriental to the Catholic faith, not that of making him accept the Latin rite.