This Encyclical contains full details about all the points of Canon Law which affect the Uniates, so that it has become the standard precedent for Papal legislation ever since. Here, so far, we are only concerned with the attitude of the Holy See in general. This attitude could not be better expressed than it is by the closing words of Allatæ sunt, quoted above: "Exoptans vehementer ut omnes Catholici sint, non ut omnes Latini fiant."
The great mind of Benedict XIV, the Canonist-Pope, hereby set a standard which his successors have observed faithfully. He made many other rules about details of Eastern rites, always in the same spirit.[1] Indeed, the tone of the Holy See towards the Uniates is set by the laws and declarations of Benedict XIV. His successors have taken back nothing of his large-minded toleration; they have only urged the same principles more strongly.
Pius VI and Clement XII fostered the Byzantine rite in lower Italy and Sicily.[2]
Pius IX (1846-1878) distinguished himself as a Pope who favoured Uniates. In his Encyclical of the Epiphany, 1848,[3] while inviting Eastern Christians to come back to unity with Rome, he repeats that the universal Church will always respect the rites and customs of her Eastern parts. He says: "We will consider your special Catholic liturgies as entirely safe and protected; we think much of them, although in some points they differ from the liturgies of the Latin Churches. Indeed, your liturgies were valued by our predecessors, as recommended by the venerable antiquity of their origin, written in languages which the Apostles and Fathers used, containing rites celebrated with splendid and magnificent pomp, so that the piety and reverence of the faithful towards the divine mysteries are thereby fostered."[4]
In his allocution of December 19, 1853, Pius IX said:
- ↑ Besides these three Constitutions, the Bullarium of Benedict XIV contains a mass of legislation about Uniates.
- ↑ See pp. 161-162.
- ↑ In suprema (Pii. XI, P.M. Acta — Typ. Bon. Art.), part i, p. 78.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 81: "Omnino autem sartas tectas habebimus peculiares uestras Liturgias; quas plurimi sane facimus, licet illæ nonnullis in rebus a Liturgia Ecclesiarum Latinarum diuersæ sint. Enimuero Liturgiæ ipsæ uestræ in pretio pariter habitæ fuerunt a Prædecessoribus nostris; utpote quæ et commendantur uenerabili antiquitate suæ originis, et conscriptæ sunt linguis, quas Apostoli aut Patres adhibuerant, et ritus continent splendido quodam ac magnifico apparatu celebrandos, quibus fidelium erga diuina mysteria pietas et reuerentia foueantur."
