![]() ![]() Many Greek writers hold that the exorciser was the mere executant of a ministry, and not in any degree "in orders." But the Latin Church claims that the reverse may be proved by the authority of the martyrs St. For the bishop, or priest delegated specially by the bishop, can alone authorize the exorcism to be exercised on a possessed person, or energumen, or place infested by demons. But it would seem that this collocation has reference only to the person who ultimately and in practice comes, as it may be said, into contact with the demon. The exorcist is usually placed next above the ostiarius in the scale, though some authorities place the lector (reader) next above the ostiarius in the scale. For the office of ostiarius elderly persons were chosen so that it would not seem that it was intended or supposed to be a step towards promotion in the hierarchy. It was their duty also to keep those attending the services in their proper places, to separate the laity from the clergy, and males from females, and to keep silence. The duties of the office consist in opening the book for the officiating priest in keeping the keys of the church, and taking care of its cleanliness and good order as well as of the furniture of it in opening and closing the doors of the church at the established hours in the maintenance of good order among the congregation and in preventing the entrance of Jews and heathens. The office of ostiarius is shown to have existed in the Apostolic Church by the letter of the Bishop St. The five other orders are of human institution, but are all claimed by the Church to have existed from Apostolic times. Bishops, priests, and deacons are of divine institution. The latter three are called the greater, and the other four the lesser orders, the sub-deacon having belonged to the former class only since the time of Innocent III. The seven generally recognized grades in the Latin Church are ostiarius, exorcist, reader, acolyte, sub-deacon, deacon, priest. But the Greek rituals recognize only the first four named and the episcopate. But in the Greek Church the number of orders has been by different writers variously reckoned from four to eleven : the former number consisting of priests, deacons, sub-deacon, and readers and the latter number made up by adding to these bishops, acolytes, exorcists, ostiarii or doorkeepers, singers, confessors, and sextons. The consensus of the great majority of writers, however, may be considered to have fixed the number at seven, so far as the Latin Church is concerned. Nor does the language of the Tridentine decree seem to assert that there are only seven. Some writers have maintained that the tonsure, the office of precentor, and episcopal consecration constitute three several orders, and that there are thus ten in the Latin Church. But it is divided into seven grades, which constitute one entirety, completed by the presbyterate or priesthood. Clerics Regular, are those who have adopted the new type of religious life inaugurated in the sixteenth century, as Theatines, Barnabites, Jesuits, Oratorians, Passionists, Redemptorists, Paulists, etc. ![]()
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