HOLYORDERS
Holy orders
In Christian churches, holy orders are special roles within the church such as bishop, priest or deacon. In the Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Assyrian, Old Catholic, Independent Catholic churches and some Lutheran churches holy orders comprise the three orders of bishop, priest and deacon, or the sacrament or rite by which candidates are ordained to those orders. Except for Lutherans and some Anglicans, these churches regard ordination as a sacrament . The Anglo-Catholic party within Anglicanism tends to identify with the Roman Catholic position with regard to the sacramental nature of ordination.The above text is a snippet from Wikipedia: Holy orders
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.