22. It is not difficult to respond to the claim that Orientals and other Greeks who reject their heresy and return to unity can be lawfully exhorted to abandon their own rite and accept the Latin rite on the grounds that approval has been given in the past and still continues for Orientals and Greeks to practice individual Latin rites.

First Category-Some Greeks Insist that Latins Follow Their Rites

There are two classes, as it were, of Greeks and Orientals. The first class consists of men who are not satisfied with the concessions made to them by the Apostolic See in order to preserve the Union. They are carried shamelessly beyond the bounds of decency; they claim that all their own practices are correct and that the Latins are mistaken not to follow the same practices.

Unleavened Bread

Take the example of unleavened bread. Greeks and Orientals must admit as Catholics that unleavened as well as leavened bread is suitable matter for the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and that each person should follow the rite of his own church. Consequently any condemnation of the rite of the Latin church which uses unleavened bread in consecrating the Eucharist falls into error.

The monk Hilarion, in his Dialectical Oration, says: "I have written this to you, beloved Greeks, without attacking your bread, which I respect and reverence as much as I do our own unleavened bread. But I have explained that your conduct is neither correct nor Christian when you insult and injure in word and deed the unleavened bread of the Latins. In both cases, as has been said, Christ is truly present" (Latin translation of the Greek by Leo Allatius in Graeciae Orthodoxae, vol. 1, p. 762, 1652).

Married Clergy

Another example is the freedom enjoyed by priests of the Oriental and Greek church to remain married to their wives after their ordination (see can. Aliter, dist. 31 and chap. Cum olim, de Clericis Conjugatis). Considering that this practice was at variance neither with divine nor natural law, but only with Church discipline, the popes judged it right to tolerate this custom, which flourished among Greeks and Orientals, rather than to forbid it by their apostolic authority, to avoid giving them a pretext to abandon unity. So does Arcudius assess the matter (Concordia bk. 7, chap. 33).

Nevertheless, incredible though it sounds, some Greeks and Orientals still accuse the Latin church of rejecting marriage simply because it requires celibacy of its subdeacons, deacons, and priests in imitation of the Apostles (see Hincmar of Rheims, Operum, vol. 2, letter 51).

Confirmation Following Baptism

A third and final example is provided by some of the Copts, whose rite prescribes that Confirmation should be conferred immediately after Baptism. The western church does not observe this practice, but generally requires that candidates for Confirmation be old enough to be able to distinguish between good and evil. The Roman Church does not oppose the ancient practice of the Copts. However - again this is incredible - some of them reject Baptism conferred by Latins because the Sacrament of Confirmation was not conferred after this Baptism.

For this reason they are rightly convicted and condemned in Our constitution 129 (Eo quamvis tempore in Our Bullarium vol. 1): "Just as it befits the gentleness and patience of the Apostolic See to allow the Copts to continue in their longestablished practice which has been tolerated by this See, so it is intolerable that they bitterly reject Baptism conferred in the Latin rite separately from Confirmation."