Jesuit Presided Over Legal Contested Wedding: ACLU Involved

ACLU files 3 suits over validity of marriages by some ministers
By Joann Loviglio
Of The Associated Press

The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the first three lawsuits in a planned statewide effort to address what they contend is a flaw in the state marriage law. Registers of wills in some counties have been telling couples who are married or about to be married that their unions aren't valid when performed by someone who does not have a regular congregation or house of worship. The couples in the three ACLU lawsuits -- filed in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia county courts on Thursday -- are seeking judicial declarations that their marriages are valid under state law.

Two of the couples were married by ministers ordained online; the third was married by a Jesuit priest who was clerking for a federal judge and wasn't assigned to a church.

''The state has no business invalidating marriages just because it doesn't like the kind of minister who officiated them,'' said ACLU attorney Mary Catherine Roper. The issue arose after a September decision by a York County judge invalidating a 10-month marriage because the officiant -- who was ordained online by the Universal Life Church -- didn't qualify as a minister under state law because he had no regular congregation or church. Since the judge's decision, registers of wills across Pennsylvania have been warning people applying for marriage licenses that their unions may be void if they are solemnized by ''itinerant ministers.''

The ACLU suits contend that such a classification would also include Jesuit professors, rabbis at college Hillels, and other ordained church authorities, as well as clergy who are retired or assigned to hospitals and military posts.

''For a judge to retroactively decide … that our marriage is no longer valid seems unfair and hurtful for both of us,'' said Ryan Hancock, who was married to his wife, Melanie, in 2005 by a friend who was a Universal Life Church minister.In their suit filed in Montgomery County, the Hancocks said they chose their officiant because they come from different religious backgrounds and did not want to favor one faith over the other. The plaintiffs in the Bucks County lawsuit, Jason and Jennifer O'Neill, said they were married in 2005 by Jason O'Neill's uncle, a Universal Life minister, for the same reason as the Hancocks.

In the Philadelphia case, Peter Goldberger and Anna Durbin were married in 1976 by a Jesuit who at the time was not affiliated with a specific congregation. "Our marriage was perfectly legal at the time it was entered into," Ryan Hancock said. "My wife and I continue to be happily married to this day. For a judge to retroactively decide, nearly three years later, that our marriage is no longer valid seems unfair and is hurtful for both of us." Peter Goldberger and Anna Durbin were married in 1976 in Philadelphia by a Roman Catholic priest, a Jesuit who was then clerking for a judge of the United States District Court. Goldberger and Durbin wanted to have a Catholic wedding in accordance with the wishes of Durbin's family, but chose to marry in Philadelphia for the convenience of many East Coast friends and relatives instead of in her home parish in the state of Washington. They are both lawyers who reside in Ardmore and have raised three children together.

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