Reader (liturgy)

In some Christian churches, the reader is responsible for reading aloud excerpts of the scripture at a liturgy. In early Christian times, the reader was of particular value due to the rarity of literacy.

In the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, the term "lector" or "reader" can mean someone who in a particular liturgy is assigned to read a Biblical text other than the Gospel. (Reading the Gospel at Mass is reserved specifically to the deacon or, in his absence, to the priest.) But it also has the more specific meaning of a person who has been "instituted" as a lector or reader, and is such even when not assigned to read in a specific liturgy. This is the meaning in which the term is used in this article.

In this sense, the office was formerly classed as one of the four minor orders and in recent centuries was generally conferred only on those preparing for ordination to the priesthood. With effect from 1 January 1973, the apostolic letter Ministeria quaedam of 15 August 1972 decreed instead that:

Canon 1035 of the Code of Canon Law requires candidates for diaconal ordination to have received and have exercised for an appropriate time the ministries of lector and acolyte and prescribes that institution in the second of these ministries must precede by at least six months ordination as a deacon.

Instituted lectors, who are all men, are obliged, when proclaiming the readings at Mass, to wear an alb (with cincture and amice unless the form of the alb makes these unnecessary). Others who perform the function of lector, but who are not instituted in the ministry of lector, are neither required nor forbidden by universal law of the Latin Church to wear an alb: "During the celebration of Mass with a congregation a second priest, a deacon, and an instituted reader must wear the distinctive vestment of their office when they go up to the ambo to read the word of God. Those who carry out the ministry of reader just for the occasion or even regularly but without institution may go to the ambo in ordinary attire, but this should be in keeping with the customs of the different regions." Like other lay ministers, they may wear an alb or "other suitable attire that has been legitimately approved by the Conference of Bishops". Neither the England and Wales episcopal conference nor that of the United States has specified a particular alternative attire., while in the dioceses of the United States of America, a cassock and surplice may be worn as "appropriate and dignified clothing"

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