New Book Defends All-Male Liturgical Ministry, Subdiaconate/Minor Orders, and Proper Roles of Clergy and Laity

I am pleased to announce the release of my latest book, Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion (Crisis Publications).

When this project was first conceived over a year ago, my initial idea was to write a critique of Paul VI’s attempted suppression of the subdiaconate and minor orders, of John Paul II’s permission of altar girls, and of Francis’s innovation of female “acolytes” and “lectors.” During its writing, however, the scope of the book considerably broadened to include a full-scale presentation and defense of the traditional sevenfold manifestation of Orders — priest, deacon, subdeacon, lector, acolyte, exorcist, and porter — together with an explanation of the distinct but mutually supporting roles of clergy and laity. In order to accomplish this, I stepped back further to look at the distinction and complementarity of the sexes in the order of creation and the order of redemption, a perspective that provides the ultimate foundation for the Church’s entire teaching on states of life, roles, and ministries. In this way the book serves as a response to the “gender madness” that afflicts the world and increasingly infects the Church.

The summer’s anti-TLM motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and the mounting threats against the former Ecclesia Dei institutes that avail themselves of the traditional rites of ordination conspire to make the book’s overall argument more urgent still. (Fortunately, subsequent to July 16 I was given the opportunity to do some last-minute revisions to the text in order to take this new scenario into account. Nothing of substance had to be changed in the overall argument.)

Ministers of Christ analyzes the problems with recent popes’ successive innovations in the area of ministry, showing how they have created a theologically and liturgically incoherent situation—a categorical rupture from a tradition firmly rooted in the most profound anthropological, Christological, and ecclesiological principles. In this regard the Church stands in desperate need of the correct (and corrective) witness of the usus antiquior. This will remain true even if a tyrannical attempt is made to prohibit the ancient rites of ordination, an act that would have no more legal validity than Traditionis Custodes itself.

Part I, “Foundations,” looks at the most fundamental questions: how sexuality and the body have personal significance and therefore moral, theological, and liturgical significance as well; the connection between the Incarnation of Our Lord and the male priesthood and male sanctuary service; the blessing on womanhood conferred in and through Our Lady, the Virgin Mother of God; the Old Testament background and New Testament roots of the diaconate, subdiaconate, and minor orders, seen as radiating outward from the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and the solemn tradition behind this ecclesiastical hierarchy; and the proper role of the laity in the great world outside the churches, where they exercise their primary responsibilities.

Part II, “Deviations,” takes a critical look at practices that entered the Church after the Second Vatican Council—above all, the attempt to sideline the subdiaconate and minor orders and the habitual use of female lectors and altar servers, whether filling in as “substitutes” or, as Pope Francis would have it, installed as ministers. It explains how these distortions and novelties misconstrue and muddle the callings of laity and clergy as well as their diverse but complementary modes of participation in the liturgy. In the course of the chapters, the notion of “active participation” is freed from its harsh captivity as a slogan trafficked by modern liturgists.

Part III, “Restoration,” charts a path out of this mess into a healthier church life, making the case for several related proposals:

– the universal reestablishment of the subdiaconate and minor orders, which have never been and cannot be abrogated and which remain in use to this day;

– a return to the traditional lex orandi of the classical Roman rite, which embodies true doctrine about states of life, ministries, and sexes;

– the wearing of veils by women in church as a sign of their dignity and role within the Mystical Body;

– the full acceptance of the supernatural and sacrificial vision of priesthood and consecrated life that attracts vocations today as it always did in the past, together with a firm repudiation of the “heresy of activism” that extinguishes the primacy of prayer and the ultimacy of contemplation;

– a reversal of the mad race of aggiornamento, to be replaced by the serene embrace of the essential changelessness of the Christian religion, which worships the immutable God in His eternal truth, reflected in traditional liturgical rites.

This book also includes the definitive versions of two essays by Bishop Athanasius Schneider: “The Significance of Minor Ministries in the Sacred Liturgy” and “Healing the Rupture: A Call for the Restoration of Minor Orders.”

Ministers of Christ concludes with three litanies for private devotional use. The first is for the clergy in general. The second and third, based on the Roman Martyrology, remind us that the Church’s history provides many examples of saintly subdeacons, lectors, acolytes, and exorcists whom we ought to invoke. Lastly, there is a select bibliography divided into topics.

Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion.
   By Peter Kwasniewski, with two chapters by Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
   Foreword by Leila Marie Lawler.
   Manchester, NH: Crisis Publications, 2021.
   xliii + 285 pp.
   Paperback $19.95.

Available directly from the publisher or from Amazon.com.

Here is a short video (by no means professional...) that has more or less the same content as the post above, for those who prefer the video format.

Guest Article: Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the Significance of Minor Ministries in the Sacred Liturgy

NLM is grateful to His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider for offering us the first publication of his profound analysis of the ancient origins of the minor orders and their liturgical-theological rationale, together with a critique on that basis of the novel path taken in the post-conciliar period, from Ministeria Quaedam of 1972 to Spiritus Domini of 2021.

Ordination of lectors in the traditional Roman rite

The Significance of Minor Ministries in the Sacred Liturgy

1. The principle of Divine law in the liturgy

Regarding the nature of the sacred liturgy, that is, of Divine worship, God himself has spoken to us in His Holy Word, and the Church has explained it in her solemn Magisterium. The first basic aspect of the liturgy is this: God himself tells men how they must honor Him; in other words, it is God who gives concrete norms and laws for the development, even exterior, of the worship of His Divine Majesty.

In fact, man is wounded by original sin and for this reason he is profoundly characterized by pride and ignorance, and even more profoundly by the temptation and tendency to put himself in the place of God at the center of worship, that is, to practice self-worship in its various implicit and explicit forms. Liturgical law and norms are therefore necessary for authentic Divine worship. These laws and norms must be found in Divine Revelation, in the written word of God and in the word of God transmitted by tradition.

Divine Revelation transmits to us a rich and detailed liturgical legislation. An entire book of the Old Testament is dedicated to liturgical law, the Book of Leviticus; partially also the Book of Exodus. The individual liturgical norms of Divine worship of the Old Testament had only a transitory value, since their purpose was to be a figure, looking to the Divine worship that would reach its fullness in the New Testament. However, there are some elements of perennial validity: firstly, the very fact of the need for liturgical legislation; secondly, that there is a detailed and rich legislation of Divine worship; and finally, that Divine worship takes place according to a hierarchical order. This hierarchical order presents itself as concretely tripartite: high priest–priest–levite; in the New Testament, respectively: bishop–presbyter–deacon/minister.

Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to bring it to its fullness (cf. Mt 5:17). He said: “Until heaven and earth have passed away, not one iota or a sign of the law will pass, without all being completed” (Mt 5:18). This is particularly valid for Divine worship, since the adoration of God constitutes the first commandment of the Decalogue (cf. Ex 20, 3-5). The purpose of all creation is this: angels and men and even irrational creatures must praise and worship the Divine Majesty, as the revealed prayer of the Sanctus says: “The heavens and the earth are full of Thy glory” (cf. Is 6:3).

Old Covenant hierarchy

2. Jesus Christ, the supreme worshiper of the Father and the supreme liturgical minister

The first and most perfect worshiper of the Father is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. His work of salvation had as its main purpose to give honor and glory to the Father in place of sinful humanity, unable to give a worthy and acceptable worship to God. The re-establishment of true Divine worship and the atonement of Divine Majesty, outraged due to the innumerable forms of perversion of worship, constituted the primary purpose of the Incarnation and the work of Redemption.

By constituting His apostles true priests of the New Covenant, Jesus left His priesthood to His Church and with it the public worship of the New Testament, which has for its ritual culmination the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. He taught his apostles through the Holy Spirit that the worship of the New Covenant was to be the fulfillment of the worship of the Old Covenant. Thus the apostles transmitted their power and their liturgical service in three degrees, that is, in three hierarchical orders, in analogy with the three degrees of the ministers of the cult of the Old Covenant.

The supreme performer of the liturgy is Christ (in Greek: hó liturgós). He contains in himself and exercises all the Divine worship, even in the smallest functions. The following words of Christ can also be referred to this fact: “I am among you as one who serves” (Lk 22:27). Christ is the minister; he is also the “deacon” par excellence. So too is the bishop, as the supreme possessor of the liturgical service of Christ. The episcopate contains all the ministries and services of public worship: the ministry of the presbyterate, the ministry of the diaconate, the ministry of the minor orders, that is, also, the service of ministers (“altar boys”). In the pontifical Mass according to the most ancient form of the Roman rite, the bishop dresses in all the robes, even of the lower orders. In the absence of all the lower ministers, the bishop himself performs all the liturgical functions of the presbyter, of the deacon, and even of the minor orders, that is, of the altar servers. In the absence of the deacon, the presbyter himself performs all the liturgical functions of the deacon and of the minor orders, that is, of the altar servers. In the absence of the deacon, the sub-deacon, the holders of the minor orders, or the altar servers can perform some of the functions of the deacon.

The vesting of a pontiff

3. The tradition of the apostles

The apostolic tradition has seen in the triple hierarchical order of the Church the fulfillment of the typology of the triple hierarchical order of Divine worship in the Old Covenant. This is what Pope Saint Clement I, the disciple of the Apostles and third successor of the Apostle Peter, testifies to us.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Saint Clement presents the liturgical order divinely established in the Old Covenant as an exemplar for the right order of the hierarchy and worship of every Christian community. Speaking of Divine worship, he states:

We must do everything in order with regard to what the Lord has ordered to do according to the appointed times. He ordered the oblations and worship services to be performed not by chance or without order. By his sovereign decision, He Himself has determined where and by whom these services are to be performed, so that all things will be done in a holy manner according to His good pleasure and pleasing to His will. For the high priest has been assigned liturgical services (liturghíai) reserved for him, priests have been given their own proper place, on the levites devolve special ministrations (diakoníai), and the layman (ho laikòs ànthropos) is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen (laikóis prostágmasin). (1 Clem 40:1-3.5)

Pope Clement understands that the principles of this order divinely established in the Old Covenant must continue to operate in the life of the Church. The most evident reflection of this order should be found in the liturgical life, in the public worship of the Church. Thus the Holy Pontiff draws this conclusion, applied to the life and worship of Christians: “May each of you, brothers, in the position that is proper to him, be pleasing to God in good conscience and with reverence, without transgressing the established rule of liturgical services (kanón tes leiturghías)” (1 Clem 41:1).

Later (cf. 1 Clem 42:1ss.) Pope Clement describes the hierarchy of the New Covenant, contained in the Lord Jesus Christ himself and concretized in the mission of the apostles. This reality corresponds to the order (táxis) willed by God. Here Saint Clement uses the same terms with which he had previously described the liturgical and hierarchical order of the Old Covenant.

From the first centuries, the Church was aware that Divine worship had to take place according to an order established by God in keeping with the example of the Divine order established in the Ancient Covenant. Therefore, in order to carry out a task in public worship, it was necessary to belong to a hierarchical order. Consequently, Christian worship, that is, the Eucharistic liturgy, was carried out in a hierarchically ordered manner by persons officially appointed for this purpose. For this reason, these agents of worship constituted an order, a sacred order, divided into three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate, paralleling the three degrees of ministers of Old Covenant worship: high priest, priests, and levites. Pope Saint Clement in the first century designated the service of the Old Testament levites with the word “diakonia” (1 Clem 40:5). We can therefore identify here the foundation of the ancient ecclesiastical tradition, since at least the fifth century, of designating the Christian deacon with the word “levite,” for example in the Constitutiones Apostolicae (2, 26:3) and in the writings of Pope Leo the Great (cf. Ep. 6:6; Ep. 14:4; Serm. 59:7; 85:2).
 

St. Peter ordains St. Stephen a deacon (Fra Angelico)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Lay Ministries Obscure Both the Laity’s Calling and the Clergy’s

The recent motu proprio Spiritus Domini has a personal resonance for me. Under the regime of progressive Catholicism in which I grew up, I recall hearing one message loud and clear: “Show your faith by signing up for XYZ ministry.” The underlying assumption was that merely assisting at Mass was not quite good enough; that was for the uncommitted, the uninterested, the unmotivated.

So I dutifully signed up to be first an altar boy, then a lector, and finally, an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion (this would have been in the 1980s). Throughout boyhood and adolescence, I didn’t understand at all what the Mass was about; I hardly had a clue what the Eucharist was; I’m not even sure my views would have differered, in essence, from how Protestants view their services. Actually, that’s not true; a Protestant would have had a much higher view of Biblical inspiration and inerrancy than I would have had. I was serving at something, I knew not what; I was reading something, I knew not what; I was distributing something, I knew not what.

It was for me a huge breakthrough, a profound liberation, to discover through the traditional Latin Mass that one can simply be at the liturgy and soak it in like a sponge; one can come to find this receptivity utterly fulfilling. Perhaps that is the saddest lesson of Spiritus Domini: its change to canon law makes sense only in the context of a liturgy that has lost its raison d’être.

The motu proprio once again raises the question of the vocation of the laity. What are laypeople supposed to be doing? Have they a proper work of their own, or do they just collect the scraps that fall from the clergy’s table — better yet, climb up and jostle elbows?

The Church’s answer has always been consistent: the laity’s work is to influence, purify, and elevate temporal affairs, bringing them as much as possible into conformity with the law of God and the Church’s mission to glorify God and save souls. The Second Vatican Council espoused this traditional point of view: Gaudium et Spes exhorts the laity “to impress the divine law on the affairs of the earthly city” (n. 43), while Apostolicam Actuositatem sets as our goal “rectifying the distortion of the temporal order and directing it to God through Christ” (n. 7).

The latter document establishes a distinction between those who teach principles and those who implement them: on the one hand, “Pastors must clearly state the principles concerning the purpose of creation and the use of temporal things and must offer the moral and spiritual aids by which the temporal order may be renewed in Christ” (ibid.); on the other hand, the “apostolate in the social milieu,” which is proper to laity, involves “the effort to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which one lives” (n. 13). As John Paul II wrote in Ecclesia in Oceania: “It is the fundamental call of lay people to renew the temporal order in all its many elements. In this way, the Church becomes the yeast that leavens the entire loaf of the temporal order” (n. 43).

Police taking part in a Sacred Heart procession

Thus, in spite of Pope Francis’s talk about the “co-responsibility” of the ordained and the lay faithful, we may say that the true responsibility of the laity is not the taking on of tasks inside the church, but taking on the world outside the church. Confronting unbelief with Christian witness, defeating secular narrowness with the grandeur of the Gospel, leavening temporal occupations with a supernatural perspective and motivation, and doing all this consistently and courageously, is far more challenging — and far more urgent — than mounting an ambo and reading a text, or donning an alb and passing cruets. In fact, the more that laity see themselves as fulfilled in aping the clergy, the more they will be deceived into thinking that they have done what they were supposed to do as Catholics. They have, as it were, punched their religion ticket, and can get back to secular life in its total secularity.

In the sacred liturgy, the laity exercise the Marian role of receiving divine gifts, which is the creature’s highest activity. No charism can be more honorable or more important than this receptivity. The gifts bestowed upon the clergy, and the various liturgical ministries, are at the service of the charity and holiness of the Church; they do not exist as ends in themselves, but as instruments for the pilgrimage of mankind to the City of God, where there will be no sacraments and no temple, since God will be “all in all” (cf. Rev 21:22–23; 1 Cor 15:28). The Marian receptivity of laymen and laywomen furnishes the light and strength necessary for their active, transformative mission in the family and in the world. Without drinking deeply from the wellspring, there can never be watered gardens. How ironic and how tragic that the laity’s misplaced liturgical activism seems inversely proportional to their zeal for the irreplaceable mission that is theirs in the home, on the land, in the city! The laity are meant to offer themselves up in sacrificial love (cf. Rom 12:1), so as to be a leaven in the world. That is their domain, that is their honorable and salvific “service.”

The Catholic peasants and aristocrats of the Vendée lived a pure Marian faith during the Terror by fully assuming their role to defend the Faith, to protect Catholic cities and families, to do battle against hostile forces; never did they try to substitute for clergy when their priests went missing. They knew, intuitively, the teaching of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 — how the Body of Christ has many diverse and unequal members that depend one upon another; that the eye has to be the eye, the hand the hand; each part has to be just what it is, to the best of its ability, and not a poor substitute for some other one. The “dignity” of the laity is in no way augmented by their taking on of quasi-clerical liturgical functions, just as neither is their dignity diminished by being spouses, parents, workers, citizens.

The Virgin Mary receiving her Son from the hand of St John

I couldn’t help noticing this past weekend in the usus antiquior, in which we celebrated the Second Sunday after Epiphany, that “the liturgical providence of God” furnished us with an Epistle and a Gospel that both referred expressly to “ministries.” We can learn some important lessons from meditating on these readings.

The Epistle is Romans 12:6–16:

Brethren: Having different gifts, according to the grace that is given us: either prophecy, to be used according to the rule of faith; or ministry, in ministering [Vulg.: ministerium in ministrando]; or he that teacheth, in doctrine; he that exhorteth, in exhorting; he that giveth, with simplicity; he that ruleth, with carefulness; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good: loving one another with the charity of brotherhood, with honour preventing one another: in carefulness not slothful: in spirit fervent: serving the Lord: rejoicing in hope: patient in tribulation: instant in prayer: communicating to the necessities of the saints: pursuing hospitality. Bless them that persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that rejoice, weep with them that weep: being of one mind one towards another; not minding high things, but consenting to the humble.

The Apostle gives us here a rich portrait of the true variety of gifts to be found in the Holy Church of God. There are gifts of ministry, but there are also gifts of prophecy, teaching, exhorting, ruling, and works of mercy. The passage then shifts from special charisms to the fundamental Christian vocation of loving: loving without dissimulation, with the charity of brotherhood; hating what is evil and cleaving to what is good; honoring, serving, praying, and offering hospitality.

When we read about offering hospitality, should we not be thinking of the baptized and confirmed laity? Hospitality has always been seen as one of the great duties and privileges of lay people: to open their homes, to share with the needy, to welcome friends and strangers. Indeed, what greater hospitality can husband and wife exercise than by giving food and shelter, love and education, to the children who are their common bond and the chief calling of their life? They own and manage property precisely for that reason: to share generously. Their primary calling is to bring Christian prayer, witness, and virtues into the home, and thence, into the workplace and marketplace, the political arena, the broad world of culture. The sanctuary is not their home, but their home can become an extension of the sanctuary. They do not “mind high things,” as if seeking a rank or a task that does not belong to them; rather, they consent to be found among the humble (another translation has: “do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly”).

The clergy, stewards of the mysteries of Christ, are busy with their own proper work, according to the gifts bestowed on them in the Mystical Body. Their primary calling is within the temple of God, offering Him exalted praise and ministering to the people, and in this work they will find fulfillment and sanctity, if — and this is a crucial if — they enjoy the freedom to be fully what they are and to utilize fully the armory and treasury of the Church’s liturgical inheritance. In short, they must have the best wine, drink it freely, and give it to others to drink.

The Gospel for the Second Sunday after Epiphany is John 2:1–11:

At that time there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee: and the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus also was invited, and His disciples, to the marriage. And the wine failing, the mother of Jesus saith to Him: They have no wine. And Jesus saith to her: Woman, what is that to Me and to thee? My hour is not yet come. His mother saith to the waiters [ministris]: Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye. Now there were set there six water-pots of stone, according to the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three measures apiece. Jesus saith to them: Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And Jesus said to them: Draw out now, and carry to the chief steward of the feast. And they carried it. And when the chief steward had tasted the water made wine, and knew not whence it was, but the waiters [ministri] knew who had drawn the water: the chief steward calleth the bridegroom, and saith to him: Every man at first setteth forth good wine: and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee; and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.

In this Gospel, Jesus is the Eternal High Priest who will offer the perfect sacrifice when “his hour” has come to glorify the Father (note how His Holy Name is mentioned seven times, which underlines His perfection as God and man — readers of St. John will know that this is anything but accidental); wine will be the symbol of the sweetness and abundance of His redemption. The architriclinus or chief steward is like the deacon who ministers to the priest at Solemn Mass; the “waiters” (ministri in Latin) are like the subdeacon and the acolytes who minister, in turn, to their superiors.

The guests at the wedding feast are the congregation. They are not serving, they are not busy with providing the food and drink; they are simply taking it all in and feasting. Theirs, in a sense, is “the better part” of Mary of Bethany.

The Virgin Mary is neither a minister nor a simple guest. Like the ministers, she brings about results, but in the mode of an intercessor — one who joins the power of the priest to the needs of the people, even as she joined in her womb the supreme deity with the neediness of human nature. Like the guests, she gratefully and joyfully receives good things from the Lord.

The Epistle and Gospel of the Second Sunday after Epiphany remind us of the wisdom of the Catholic Church in her traditional hierarchical and Christocentric liturgical praxis. Compared with the irrefutable coherence of the usus antiquior as it returns to more and more altars, the “polyesterdays” of liturgical experimentation are shown to have no staying power, no future — even on the artificial life support of canon law. 

On the Status of Minor Orders and the Subdiaconate

Roman subdiaconate ordination (post-1973!)

Arising more and more often nowadays is the question: What exactly is the status of the minor orders (porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte) in the Roman rite? We can add to this list the major order of subdeacon. In spite of their immense antiquity, which ought to have gained them the principled support of the liturgical reform — they are, for example, more ancient than the season of Advent — the minor orders were abolished in the form in which they had existed previously (or at least, it seemed to observers that they were abolished) by Paul VI in his Apostolic Letter Ministeria Quaedam of 1973. Yet never since that time have both minor orders and the subdiaconate ceased to be conferred in this or that corner of the vast Catholic world; with increasing frequency thanks to John Paul II’s Ecclesia Dei and Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, these orders are routinely imparted to the many young candidates who flock to traditional orders. It certainly seems like an odd situation.

As far as I can tell, there’s the “conservative” view and the “rad trad” view.

The conservative view, such as one might find it on the faculty of an Opus Dei university, is to say that the minor orders and subdiaconate were in fact abrogated and their functions reassigned, but that, just as the old liturgical tradition continued and was eventually regularized, so, too, the use of the ceremonies for the suppressed orders were regularized in that context, and are efficacious in that context. It’s “praetercanonical.”

The weakness of this position is that it leans too much on canon law. Canon law is not some kind of inerrant or infallible thing; it’s just a compilation of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, and it can be badly done, have omissions, need correction or supplementation, etc. Canon law’s silence on the minor orders and the subdiaconate does not logically preclude the possibility of their continuing existence. Not all things in heaven and on earth are contained in the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

With this, we segue into the rad trad position, which maintains that no pope has the authority to abolish a millennial tradition like the minor orders and the subdiaconate, just as no pope, strain he ever so many a pontifical muscle, could abolish the immemorial Roman Mass codified but not created by St. Pius V in 1570. On this view, Paul VI’s attempt to do both of these things wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. This has already, in a sense, been recognized regarding the Mass by Benedict XVI when he said in Summorum Pontificum that the old missal was never abrogated, even though nearly everyone, except a tiny number of traditionalists, acted as if it had been. Due to craven ultramontanism, however, people went along with the pretense and still act as if the minor orders and the subdiaconate were suppressed. Traditional religious and clerical communities, on the other hand, know better, and continue to follow the settled and venerable Roman tradition.

At very least something like the conservative view has to be true; otherwise, in conferring minor orders today (and most of all, the subdiaconate!), one would be guilty of simulating a conferral that cannot happen — a sort of contraceptive liturgy. It is impossible that the Church could continue to use such rites without their being efficacious in accomplishing what they intend to accomplish. A sacramental theologian of Scotistic subtlety might rejoinder that there is a third possibility: these rites are not efficacious in se — they actually do nothing to the recipients — but their content, being piously edifying, offers an occasion of grace for the devout in their progress toward the diaconate and priesthood. It would be essentially fancy playacting in the sight of God, publicly and solemnly marking stages of formation.

All of these positions seem ecclesiologically unsatisfactory in one way or another. The least problematic, it seems to me, is to maintain that the old rites, when used today, confer the orders they intend to confer, while admitting that how the order is regulated in the Church is governed by the 1983 Code of Canon Law. With the 1983 Code, Ministeria Quaedam became a moot point — of historical interest, no doubt, and offering guidelines for acolytes, etc., but it was superseded. Hence, by the only code currently in force, reception of tonsure does not make one a cleric. A man becomes a cleric with the diaconate. He can freely take upon himself the obligations for the Divine Office that once came with the subdiaconate, but he is not strictly bound by law until he is ordained a deacon.

That is not to say, as mentioned above, that this law is a good one and should not be changed in the future. Not is it to say that the commitment is not serious prior to the diaconate. There is a whole culture that goes with the minor orders: they set a person apart for liturgical offices and activities, preparing a man step by step, through lower forms of ministry, to receive the higher forms of the major orders, by which he is decisively inserted into the exercise of the priesthood of Jesus Christ in the Church.

Catholics were told that they should engage in ecumenism, but the one ecumenism that was forbidden was respecting the traditions we hold in common with the East. The minor orders and the subdiaconate abide in the Eastern churches. It is far more plausible to assume that they abide, and must abide, in the Roman Church as well.

Further reading: 

• Kevin Di Camillo, “What Were the ‘Minor Orders,’ and Why Do They Matter?”
• Father Dave Endres answers a question, exhibiting to perfection the mentality of those who see things in the simplistic terms: “before Paul VI, we did X; now we only do Y.”
• Modern Medievalism: “More than boys; why men are needed to serve the altar”

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website, SoundCloud page, and YouTube channel.