Using Deacons as Readers and Servers

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

CollegeKid:

I thought it was bishop, priest, deacon?

You are correct, the three major Holy Orders are deacon, priest, and bishop.

What about bishop? And what’s a subdeacon? How was it a major order/what’s a major order?

Subdeacon is one of the minor orders. It is not used in the Western Church, as far as I know. We do have it in the Byzantine Church. It is a minor order as subdeacons can still marry.

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

ByzCath:

You are correct, the three major Holy Orders are deacon, priest, and bishop.

Subdeacon is one of the minor orders. It is not used in the Western Church, as far as I know. We do have it in the Byzantine Church. It is a minor order as subdeacons can still marry.

Maybe we’re working with different eccesiastical disciplines here, but prior to its suppression the Latin subdiaconate was a major order and one was bound to celibacy upon reception of it.

See the Catholic Encyclopedia:
newadvent.org/cathen/14320a.htm

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

Andreas Hofer:

Maybe we’re working with different eccesiastical disciplines here, but prior to its suppression the Latin subdiaconate was a major order and one was bound to celibacy upon reception of it.

See the Catholic Encyclopedia:
newadvent.org/cathen/14320a.htm

I see that it does state that the subdeacon is the lowest of the major holy orders but I do not take the work you posted as offical Church Teaching as I have seen it wrong in the past.

But having said that, if you look at the section on minor orders, newadvent.org/cathen/10332b.htm, it states “A minor cleric who marries is regarded as having forfeited his clerical privileges.”

So I think this goes more to the fact that the Latin Church practices clerical celibacy where the East does not always do so. A man in the seminary who is going to be ordained as a married man will stop at subdeacon until he has married.

Also, every man being ordained a deacon goes though acolyte, lector, subdeacon, then to deacon. I do not believe that the Latin Church has kept to this progression.

 

[John_Lilburne]

ByzCath:

I see that it does state that the subdeacon is the lowest of the major holy orders but I do not take the work you posted as offical Church Teaching as I have seen it wrong in the past.

The replacement of minor orders with instituted ministers in the Latin Church happened in 1972, with Pope Paul VI’s Motu Proprio “Ministeria Quaedam”.

It is in Latin at vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19720815_ministeria-quaedam_lt.html and in English at romanrite.com/Churchdoc.html .

The encyclopedia at newadvent.org is a 1911 edition.

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

John Lilburne:

The replacement of minor orders with instituted ministers in the Latin Church happened in 1972, with Pope Paul VI’s Motu Proprio “Ministeria Quaedam”.

It is in Latin at vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19720815_ministeria-quaedam_lt.html and in English at romanrite.com/Churchdoc.html .

The encyclopedia at newadvent.org is a 1911 edition.

John,
Thanks.

I guess this is why the “minor orders” in the Western Church are now no longer considered clergy, am I correct in this assumption?

 

[plato3]

ByzCath:

I see that it does state that the subdeacon is the lowest of the major holy orders but I do not take the work you posted as offical Church Teaching as I have seen it wrong in the past.

But having said that, if you look at the section on minor orders, newadvent.org/cathen/10332b.htm, it states “A minor cleric who marries is regarded as having forfeited his clerical privileges.”

So I think this goes more to the fact that the Latin Church practices clerical celibacy where the East does not always do so. A man in the seminary who is going to be ordained as a married man will stop at subdeacon until he has married.

Also, every man being ordained a deacon goes though acolyte, lector, subdeacon, then to deacon. I do not believe that the Latin Church has kept to this progression.

The only one that was dropped was subdeacon. We went through the rest.
Deacon Tony

 

[John_Lilburne]

ByzCath:

John,
Thanks.

I guess this is why the “minor orders” in the Western Church are now no longer considered clergy, am I correct in this assumption?

Yes, Ministeria Quaedam clarified this, saying:

It is in accordance with the reality itself and with the contemporary outlook that the above-mentioned ministries should no longer be called minor orders; their conferral will not be called ordination, but institution. Only those who have received the diaconate, however, will be clerics in the true sense and will be so regarded. This arrangement will bring out more clearly the distinction between clergy and laity, between what is proper and reserved to the clergy and what can be entrusted to the laity.

From Documents on the Liturgy 1963-1979, Liturgical Press, Minnesota, 1982, page 909.