Minor orders

In Christianity, minor orders are ranks of church ministry. In the Catholic Church, the predominating Latin Church formerly distinguished between the major orders—priest (including bishop), deacon and subdeacon—and four minor orders—acolyte, exorcist, lector, and porter (in descending order of seniority). In 1972, the Vatican re-titled the minor orders as "ministries", with those of lector and acolyte being kept throughout the Latin Church. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the three minor orders in use are those of subdeacon, reader and chanter.

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 Catholic religious institutes and societies of apostolic life authorized to observe the 1962 form of the Roman Rite.

Some traditionalist Catholics continue to use minor orders, as do Old Catholics, the Polish National Catholic Church and the Liberal Catholic Church.

Western Catholicism

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.

The Council of Sardica (343) mentions the lectorate alone as obligatory before ordination to the diaconate. The obligation to receive all four minor orders appears to date only from a time when they ceased to indicate exercise of an actual function. Even in the early years of the 20th century, no minimum age, other than that of the "age of reason", was laid down for receiving minor orders. However, the 1917 Code of Canon Law laid down that nobody was to be given clerical tonsure, which had to be received before minor orders, before beginning the regular course of theological studies. Before the entry into force of that Code, it was an almost universal custom to confer all four minor orders at one time, since the bishop was authorized to dispense from the rule that each order had to be exercised for some time before reception of the next highest order. Today, as indicated in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, anyone who is to be ordained to the diaconate must already have received the ministries of lector and acolyte and exercised them for a suitable period, with an interval of at least six months between becoming an acolyte and becoming a deacon.

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. 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. 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, a rule that applies even to members of institutes authorized to observe the 1962 form of the Roman Rite, such as the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter and others under the care of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, regarding, however, only the incardination of members within the institute or society.

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. 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). In the 1950s, Antonio Piolanti recognized as orders only episcopacy, priesthood (presbyterate) and diaconate, the three whose transmission is reserved to bishops. In speaking of the hierarchical structure of the Church, the Second Vatican Council mentioned only these three orders, not minor orders or subdiaconate.

By Pope Paul VI's motu proprio Ministeria quaedam of 15 August 1972, the term "minor orders" has been replaced by that of "ministries". Two of what were called minor orders, those of reader and acolyte, are kept throughout the Latin Church, and national episcopal conferences are free to use the term "subdeacon" in place of that of "acolyte". The motu proprio specified the functions of each of these two ministries. A prescribed interval, as decided by the Holy See and the national episcopal conference, is to be observed between receiving them. Candidates for diaconate and for the priesthood must receive both ministries and exercise them for some time before receiving holy orders.

Conferral of the minor orders or ministries is by the ordinary: either a diocesan bishop or someone who is equivalent in law to a diocesan bishop or, in the case of clerical religious institutes and societies of apostolic life, a major superior. The two ministries that are in use throughout the Latin Church could be conferred even on persons who are not candidates for holy orders.

In the Latin Church, the lay ministries of acolyte and lector, may be entrusted to all suitable faithful, whether male or female, per CIC Canon 230 §2. Additionally there is established the instituted ministry of the Catechist, whether male or female.

Eastern Christianity

Eastern Christianity traditionally views the subdeacon as a minor order. The other common minor order is reader (lector). 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.

The 23 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in union with Rome have their traditional minor orders, governed by their own particular law. In all Eastern Catholic Churches, subdeacons are minor clerics, since admission to major orders is by ordination as deacon. 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. The minor orders of candle bearer and cantor are given before tonsure during ordination to the lectorate.

Eastern Orthodox Churches routinely confer the minor orders of reader and subdeacon, and some jurisdictions also ordain cantors. Ordination to minor orders is performed outside the sanctuary and at any communal worship service, but always outside the context of actual Divine Liturgy. 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.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Minor Orders — (Lat. Ordines Minores).

The lower degrees of the hierarchy are designated by the name of minor orders, in opposition to the "major" or "sacred" orders. At the present time the ranks of the clergy are entered by the tonsure, after which all the orders without omission are received in succession. Moreover, ecclesiastics, as a general rule, no longer remain in the lower orders, the liturgical functions of which are discharged either by the clergy in the higher orders, as in exorcism, or by the laity, as in singing and serving at the altar. Formerly one entered the clergy by being appointed to discharge any of the functions reserved to ecclesiastics. Such functions were of two kinds. The liturgical ones constituted orders, though of a lower rank; by ordination the recipients of the minor orders received official authority to perform these functions. The other ecclesiastical functions were rather offices, entrusted to clerics, whether ordained or not. Thus in the first centuries there figured in the ranks of the clergy notaries, defensores ecclesiae, oeconomi, catechists, cantors, fossores (for the cemeteries), etc., to say nothing of deaconesses. But these various offices did not constitute orders, and those who filled them formed part of the clergy without having been ordained, like tonsured clerics and lay-brothers of today. As to the liturgical functions attached to the various minor orders, they are really but a participation, originally rather indefinite, in the liturgical ministry formerly confided entirely to the deacons. This explains why minor orders differ in the Latin Church and in the various Eastern Churches.

In the East, though at an early date we hear of porters and exorcists (never of acolytes), after the Trullan Synod in 692, in accordance with its sixth canon, only lectors and cantors are known, and often even these orders coalesce, or are conferred at the same time; the three other minor orders of the Latin Church (porter, exorcist, acolyte) are held to be included in the subdiaconate. In the East, moreover, the subdiaconate has remained a minor order; in the West it was gradually detached from the minor orders, on account of its higher liturgical functions and also because of the vow of celibacy it called for. Finally, Innocent III definitively included it in the major orders, and made the subdeacon, as well as the deacon and priest, eligible for the episcopate (c. 9, "De aetate et qualit.," I, tit. 14, an. 1207). There are, then, in the Western Church four minor orders: porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte; the cantors merely exercise an office and are not an order. These four orders are all mentioned about the year 252 in the famous letter of Pope Cornelius to Fabius of Antioch (Euseb., "Hist. Eccl.," I, vi, 43): "He (Novatian) knew that there were in this Church (of Rome) 46 priests, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, and 52 exorcists, lectors, and porters." This quotation shows that besides the acolytes, who were enumerated separately and were at Rome almost assimilated with the subdeacons, there was a kind of indefinite class formed by the clerics of the three latter orders. This seems to indicate that all clerics did not necessarily pass through the four lower orders; as a matter of fact the Council of Sardica (can. xiii) mentions only the lectorate as obligatory before receiving the diaconate. Pope Siricius (Ad Himerium, nn. 9-10) and Pope Zosimus (Ad Hesychium, nn. 1 and 3) describe for us the ordinary career of Roman clerics: from boyhood or youth they are lectors; about the age of twenty, acolytes or subdeacons; those who enter the clergy when already grown up are first exorcists or lectors, after a certain time acolytes or subdeacons. Briefly, it appears that the obligation of receiving all the minor orders without exception is a law dating from the time when the minor orders ceased to be exercised in the original way. Moreover, there is no longer any fixed age at which the minor orders may be received. Canon law is silent on the subject. Canonists, including Benedict XIV (Constitution, "Eo quamvis," 4 May, 1745), admit that minor orders may be conferred not only on those who have reached the age of puberty, but on boys over seven years. In fact, minor orders are usually conferred on ecclesiastical students during their seminary studies. The Council of Trent requires merely that the candidates understand Latin (Sess. XXIII, e. xii).

Although several medieval theologians regarded minor orders as sacramental, this view is no longer held, for the fundamental reason that minor orders, also the subdiaconate, are not of Divine or Apostolic origin. The rites by which they are conferred are quite different from ordination to holy orders. Minor orders are conferred by the presentation to the candidate of the appropriate instruments, in accordance with the ritual given in the "Statuta Ecclesiae antiqua," a document which originated in Gaul about the year 500. We do not know how even in Rome the porters and exorcists were ordained in former times. Lectors received a simple benediction; acolytes were created by handing them the linen bag in which they carried the Eucharist; subdeacons by the reception of the chalice. Moreover, while deacons and priests could be ordained only on the four Ember Saturdays and on two Saturdays in Lent, minor orders could be conferred on any day. Even at the present time the latter may be conferred, apart from general ordinations, on all Sundays and on Holy Days of obligation, not necessarily at Mass. The usual minister of these orders as of the others, is a bishop; but regular abbots who have received episcopal benediction may give the tonsure and minor orders to their subjects in religion. By papal privilege several prelates Nullius (i.e., exempt) can confer these orders. It is an almost universal custom now to confer the four minor orders at, one time, and the Council of Trent (loc. cit.) leaves the bishop quite free to dispense with the interstices (q.v.).

Clerics in minor orders enjoy all ecclesiastical privileges. They may be nominated to all benefices not major, but must receive within a year the major orders necessary for certain benefices. On the other hand, they are not bound to celibacy, and may lawfully marry. Marriage, however, causes them at once to forfeit every benefice. Formerly it did not exclude them from the ranks of the clergy, and they retained all clerical privileges, provided they contracted only one marriage and that with a virgin, and wore clerical costume and the tonsure (c.unic., "de cler. conjug." in VI); they might even be appointed to the service of a church by the bishop (Conc. Trid., Sess. XXIII, c. vi). This earlier discipline, however, is no longer in accordance with modern custom and law. A minor cleric who marries is regarded as having forfeited his clerical privileges. (See ORDERS; ACOLYTE; EXORCIST; LECTOR; PORTER; SUBDEACON; ABBOT; TONSURE.)

MANY, Praelect. de sacra ordinatione (Paris, 1905), 29, 127, 265, etc.; GASPARRI, De sacra ordinatione (Paris, 1893); FERRARIS, Prompta bibliotheca, s.v. Ordo. See also commentaries of various canonists on the Decretals, De clericis conjugatis, I, tit. 11-14; III, tit. 3.

Further reading

• Ramsey, John (Patrick) (2016), The Minor Clergy of the Orthodox Church. Their role and life according to the canons., CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, ISBN 978-1523214013