Minor orders are ranks of church ministry lower than major orders.
The Roman Catholic Church in its Latin Rite traditionally distinguished between the major orders (holy orders) of bishop, priest, deacon and subdeacon, and 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. All four minor orders are still conferred on 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.
Read more about Minor Orders: Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Christianity
Famous quotes containing the words minor and/or orders:
“There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”
—Rebecca West (18921983)
“What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayingsthey are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong.”
—Norman Douglas (18681952)