orders

[donumabdeo]

In this Catechism of the Council of Trent that I have been reading, it describes minor orders such as the porter, reader, exorcist, acolyte, and it also describes major orders like the subdeacon, deacon, and priest.  Even the minor orders were ordained and provided with the powers and duties, whether liturgical or other.  Is anyone familiar with where they went to and when they went away?  This seems like a large break in tradition.

[Catholicmilkman]

The Minor Orders were 'done away with' by the reforms of Pope Paul VI or a bad interpretation thereof.

[Paul]

They were suppressed after Vatican II, and replaced by "lay ministers".

[aquinas138]

The abolition of the minor orders is perhaps the most egregious example of the "archaeologizing" that followed after the Council.  Though the minor orders did not exist in the earliest days of the Church as distinct steps on the path to priesthood, they are very, very ancient and reasons adduced for this abolition are very weak.  The abandonment of the subdeacon is the most egregious in this regard.  The number of things we take for granted, and the reformers did too, that are actually more recent than the minor orders is actually shocking:

The earliest mention of the subdeacon - 255

The Gloria introduced into the Roman Mass - after 360 by St. Hilary of Poitiers
The first Ecumenical Council - 325
The first mention of the term "transubstantiation" - 1079

And the list can go on.  At least the office of subdeacon, if not the four minor orders, is older than the first Ecumenical Council - and thus the dogmatic definition of the Trinity.  Even though all grades of ministry lower than deacon were recognized as not being of dominical origin well before the Council, their abolition is still scandalous and, in my opinion, one of the greater losses of the post-conciliar period.

[HMiS]

The four minor orders and three major orders are defined and known since 252 A.D., that is since the 3rd century A.D.

There are, then, in the Western Church four minor orders: porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte; the cantors merely exercise an office and are not an order. These four orders are all mentioned about the year 252 in the famous letter of Pope Cornelius to Fabius of Antioch (Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl.," I, vi, 43): "He (Novatian) knew that there were in this Church (of Rome) 46 priests, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, and 52 exorcists, lectors, and porters." This quotation shows that besides the acolytes, who were enumerated separately and were at Rome almost assimilated with the subdeacons, there was a kind of indefinite class formed by the clerics of the three latter orders.

[OrlandoCatholic]

Didn't the NO just keep the acolyte order?

[PeteC]

Didn't the NO just keep the acolyte order?

Ministries.Ministeria Quaedam