Minor Orders

Minor orders are ranks of church ministry lower than major orders.

In the Catholic Church, the predominating 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.

In 1972, the minor orders were renamed "ministries", with those of lector and acolyte being kept throughout the Latin Church. 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.

Some traditional Catholics continue to use minor orders, as do Old Roman Catholics and the Liberal Catholic Church.

In the Orthodox Church, the three minor orders in use are those of subdeacon, reader and chanter.

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.

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