Minor orders

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Minor orders are ranks of church ministry lower than major orders.[1][2]

Within the Catholic Church, the Latin Church traditionally distinguished between the major holy orders of priest (including both bishop and presbyter), deacon and subdeacon, and the four minor orders, that of acolyte, exorcist, lector and porter (in descending sequence).[1][3]

In 1972, the minor orders were renamed "ministries", with those of lector and acolyte being kept throughout the Latin Church.[4] The rites by which all four minor orders were conferred (but not the actual conferral of the order) are still employed for members of some Roman Catholic religious institutes and societies of apostolic life authorized to observe the 1962 form of the Roman Rite.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the three minor orders in use are those of subdeacon, cantor and lector.[1]

Roman Catholic Church[edit]

From the beginning of the 3rd century there is evidence in Western Christianity of the existence of what became the four minor orders (acolytes, exorcists, doorkeepers and readers), as well as of cantors and fossores (tomb diggers). The evidence for readers is probably the earliest. In the West, unlike the East, where imposition of hands was used, the rite of ordination was by the handing over to them of objects seen as instruments of the office.[5]


The 1917 Code of Canon Law also restricted conferral of tonsure and any order below that of the presbyterate to those who intended to become priests and who were judged likely to be worthy priests.[8] Previously, there were lay cardinals and others, including the famous Franz Liszt, who received minor orders alone. They could even marry and remain clerics, the status of belonging to the clergy being at that time conferred through clerical tonsure, provided that they married only once and that to a virgin; but by the early 20th century a cleric who married was considered to have forfeited his clerical status.[2] Today, a man who receives what were previously called minor orders is not yet a cleric, since today one becomes a cleric only upon ordination to the diaconate,[9] a rule that applies even to members of institutes authorized to observe the 1962 form of the Roman Rite,[10] such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and others under the care of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.

In the early 20th century, Auguste Boudinhon said that, on the grounds that minor orders did not originate with Jesus or the apostles, the view that minor orders and the subdiaconate were sacramental, a view held by several medieval theologians, was no longer held.[2] The slightly earlier G. van Noort said that the view of their sacramentality, which was held by most scholastic theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, was then held only by a few, among whom he mentioned Louis Billot (1846-1931) and Adolphe Tanquerey (1854-1932).[11] In the 1950s, Antonio Piolanti recognized as orders only episcopacy, priesthood (presbyterate) and diaconate,[12] the three whose transmission is reserved to bishops.[13] In speaking of the hierarchical structure of the Church, the Second Vatican Council mentioned only these three orders, not minor orders or subdiaconate.[14]



Eastern Christianity[edit]

Eastern Christianity traditionally views the subdeacon as a minor order,[23] unlike the practice of the West which considered it a major order. The other common minor order is lector (reader). The minor order of porter is mentioned historically in some service-books, but no longer is given; all of the rights and responsibilities of each minor order are viewed as contained in the subdiaconate.[2]

The 22 sui iuris Eastern Churches that are in union with Rome have their traditional minor orders, governed by their own particular law.[24] In all Eastern Catholic Churches, subdeacons are minor clerics, since admission to major orders is by ordination as deacon.[25] The Byzantine tradition allows for several orders of minor clerics. The sui iuris Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh, also called the Byzantine-Ruthenian Church, has the minor orders of candle bearer, cantor, lector and subdeacon, and in English uses the term "ordination" for their cheirothesis.[26] The minor orders of candle bearer and cantor are given before tonsure during ordination to the lectorate.[27]

Eastern Orthodox Churches routinely confer the minor orders of lector and subdeacon, and some jurisdictions also ordain cantors. Ordination to minor orders is done by a bishop at any public worship service, but always outside the context of the Divine Liturgy.[28] The order of taper-bearer is now used as part of ordination as a lector. The orders of doorkeepers, exorcists, and acolytes are no longer in common use.[29]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ a b c The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
  2. ^ a b c d e f Auguste Boudinhon, "Minor Orders" in Catholic Encyclopedia 1911
  3. ^ Catechism of the Council of Trent (Dublin 1829), p. 310
  5. ^ A. Villien, H. W. Edwards, History and Liturgy of the Sacraments, pp. 237ff.
  6. ^ Canon 976 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law
  7. ^ Code of Canon Law, canon 1035
  8. ^ Canon 973 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law
  9. ^ Code of Canon Law, canon 266
  10. ^ Instruction on the Application of the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, 30
  13. ^ Piolanti 1955, pp. 463-468
  14. ^ Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium
  15. ^ Ministeria quaedam, II
  16. ^ Ministeria quaedam, IV
  17. ^ Ministeria quaedam, IV-VI
  18. ^ Ministeria quaedam, X
  19. ^ Ministeria quaedam, XI
  20. ^ Ministeria quaedam, IX
  21. ^ Ministeria quaedam, VII
  22. ^ Ministeria quaedam, III
  27. ^ Eparchial Newsletter (October–November 1998) eparchy-of-van-nuys.org Accessed 2007-11-28
  28. ^ The Sacramental Life of the Orthodox Church, Calivas (2005) Minor orders