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Pa. Judge OKs Weddings by Ministers Ordained via Internet
The Legal Intelligencer
January 07, 2009
A minister ordained over the Internet who has no congregation and no church to preach in is nonetheless empowered under Pennsylvania law to preside over marriage ceremonies, a Bucks County judge has ruled.
The Dec. 31 decision by Judge C. Theodore Fritsch Jr. in In re O'Neill directly conflicts with a September 2007 decision in which a York County, Pa., judge invalidated a marriage because it was performed by a minister who was ordained via the Internet.
In Heyer v. Hollerbush , York County Judge Maria Musti Cook held that the marriage of Dorie Heyer and Jacob Hollerbush never existed because the Universal Life Church minister who conducted it did not serve a congregation or preach in a physical house of worship.
In the wake of Cook's decision, registers of wills in counties throughout Pennsylvania began telling prospective couples that marriages performed by ministers who do not serve a congregation or place of worship are not valid.
In Bucks County, the register of wills went further, urging some couples to get remarried if their officiant did not regularly serve a congregation.
Attorney Mary Catherine Roper of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania said Cook's ruling created uncertainty among couples who feared that their marriages might one day be declared invalid.
As a result, Roper went to court on behalf of three couples -- in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties -- seeking declarations that their marriages are valid.
Now, with Fritsch's decision, Roper has won all three cases and, in the final case, a written opinion that rejects Cook's analysis.
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But in an interview, Roper said that the uncertainty is likely to persist because there has not yet been a ruling by any Pennsylvania appellate court on the issue, and that she intends to file a similar suit on behalf of a York County couple to directly challenge Cook's decision.
"The question we asked ourselves was: Do we really have to bring these actions another 64 times in order to fix this problem?" Roper said, referring to Pennsylvania's 67 counties.
By filing in York County, Roper said, the next case will either result in Cook or another York County judge deciding to reverse the Heyer decision, or in a decision that could be taken up on appeal.
In the Bucks County case, Jason and Jennifer O'Neill of Conshohocken, Pa., said they were married in 2005 in Bucks County by Jason O'Neill's uncle, Robert A. Norman, who is a Universal Life Church minister.
Seeking a declaration that their marriage is a valid one, the couple said that the Universal Life Church is "an established church that is recognized as such by its members and is accorded tax-exempt status by the federal and state governments."
The O'Neills claim that they opted to have Norman officiate because they wanted to have a religious ceremony but did not want to choose between the different religious traditions of their families and that they found the principles of the Universal Life Church reflected their personal beliefs.
In his 14-page decision, Fritsch said he recognized that Cook's decision had "caused uncertainty among those Pennsylvanians married either by ULC ministers or other religious officiants without current congregations."
The ruling quickly had a widespread effect, Fritsch noted, because David Cleaver, the solicitor for the Pennsylvania Association of Registers of Wills and Clerks of Orphans' Court, issued a warning to all registers not to accept marriage certificates from ministers with "questionable qualifications."
The Bucks County register sent letters to couples to inform them of Cook's decision, Fritsch noted, and to encourage them to check that their officiant was a legitimate member of a regularly established church or congregation.
Fritsch found that Cook had taken too narrow a reading of the Pennsylvania Marriage Act and that the law should not be read to exclude ministers without a congregation or a physical church to preach in.
"There is no requirement that a marriage be performed by a person of any specific qualifications, for in some instances a marriage may be solemnized by the couple themselves and the certificate may be signed by any two witnesses," Fritsch wrote.
The correct reading of the law, Fritsch said, is that it allows either a minister of an established church or of an established congregation to solemnize a marriage.
"To interpret 'church' as merely a physical place of worship would limit persons who are authorized to perform a marriage in the Commonwealth to only those religious officials who preside over a group of worshipers in a specific building," Fritsch wrote.
Such a ruling would "create unjust results," Fritsch found, because it would exclude ordained religious scholars who are unlikely to have a specific group of followers, as well as those who have found their religious calling in academia and "have elected to teach in lieu of having their own church or congregation."
Fritsch found that if the General Assembly intended for the phrase "church or congregation" to be read so narrowly, "it would have so specified."
As a result, Fritsch concluded that the most logical reading of the phrase is that it "refers to religion and faith in the broader sense."
"To find otherwise would arbitrarily prohibit many leaders of religious organizations and otherwise qualified individuals from performing marriages," Fritsch wrote.
Fritsch concluded that Universal Life Church ministers qualify as valid officiants under a broader reading of the law.
The key teaching of the ULC is that everyone should follow their own spiritual paths, Fritsch noted, and the church's central tenet is to "do that which is right."
"The belief system of the ULC is broad, but that does not make it illusory," Fritsch wrote, noting that the church was founded in 1959 and currently boasts more than 20 million members worldwide.
Fritsch also found no problem with ULC's "untraditional" ordination process that encourages all members to become ordained and allows for ordination over the Internet with no training and no cost.
"It is not for us to determine in this context how any faith chooses to ordain its leaders and propagate its beliefs," Fritsch wrote.
