Minor orders

Common card · No. 497216

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.

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