The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1753 page)

 
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Order of the Cross
.

A religious movement or fellowship founded in England in 1904 by J. Todd Ferrier. The movement proclaims ‘the brotherhood of man’, the essential unity of all religious quests and the unity of all living beings in the divine.

 
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Orders
.

The various grades of Christian ministers. In the W. Church until 1972 these were
bishop
,
priest
,
deacon
,
subdeacon
,
acolyte
, exorcist, reader, and doorkeeper (though sometimes ‘bishop’ was not considered a distinct order from ‘priest’).
In 1972 the Roman Catholic orders of subdeacon, exorcist, and doorkeeper were suppressed; the other two minor orders which had formerly been nominal steps to the priesthood, were called ‘ministeria’ and allowed to be conferred on laymen. In most E. churches the major orders are bishop, priest, and deacon, and the minor orders subdeacon and reader. (Other titles like
chorepiscopus
and
archpriest
are not usually considered separate orders.)

 
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(Lat.,
ordinale
). Originally a Christian manual giving details of the variations in the
office
according to changes in the ecclesiastical year.

 
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Ordinary
.

In
canon
law, an ecclesiastic having the spiritual jurisdiction over a particular area as part of his office. Thus the ordinary of a diocese is the
bishop
, etc.

 
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(Lat.,
ordo missae
). The (almost) invariable parts of the
mass
, comprising the preparatory prayers,
Kyrie
,
Gloria
and
Creed
, the
Preface
and
Sanctus
, the
canon
,
Lord's Prayer
,
fraction
and
Agnus Dei
, and part of the communion and post-communion devotions. It is distinguished from the
proper
.

 
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