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Need a Priest? Try Google.
Web sites like www.theknot.com, www.rentapriest.com and www.lovingheartsceremonies.com are giving engaged couples a whole new way to find someone to preside over their weddings.
bdj207@nyu.eduMike and Amy Naber planned to get married in New York City next year. But when they learned that Mike’s mother had terminal cancer, they had to move up the date and move the wedding to Buffalo, N.Y., so Mike’s mom could attend.
They thought finding a priest to marry them would be the least of their worries. But when the couple approached a priest at a Catholic church in Buffalo where Mike was baptized and his mother had been a longtime member, they were met with a litany of requirements, which included attending a class and producing a letter attesting that the couple was in good standing with their local church. Complying would have taken several months too long, and ultimately, the church hierarchy wouldn’t relax its standards. “I felt really disappointed,” Amy said.
Then the couple turned to churches in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where they live and where Mike owns a restaurant called Bonnie’s Grill. Their experience wasn’t much better. “This guy wouldn’t shake my hand,” Mike said of one local cleric. “He was cold as ice.”
So Amy did what growing numbers of young people are doing to find someone to preside over their weddings: She logged on to the Internet. The Nabers soon found a Westchester county-based freelance priest who married Mike and Amy in Buffalo’s Delaware Park on Sept. 17, 2005. Mike’s mother was there, and the couple felt they’d made the right choice. “He had a really warm smile and a really welcoming face,” Amy said of their priest.
It’s not just young Catholics turning to the Internet to find wedding officiants. New York Rabbi Roger Ross specializes in interfaith marriages, advertising on the Web. In addition to performing weddings, Ross is the executive director of the New Seminary in Manhattan. He considers the Internet “a marvelous resource.”
“Couples look for a clergy person who can meet their needs, and aside from a few magazines, most of the ways to find somebody are online,” Ross said.
The phenomenon of couples finding priests online reflects not only the pervasiveness of the Internet, but the declining influence of traditional churches in today’s society, according to the Reverend Doctor Joel Mason, rector at the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Chappaqua, N.Y. To Mason, the idea that people are turning to the Internet for spiritual needs is nothing new: He wrote his doctoral thesis at Drew University on the viability of the Internet as a tool for the church to serve parishioners. “Religious certainty has broken down a lot,” Mason said.
Another key reason for the proliferation of online ministers is that they offer middle ground between a dry impersonal civil wedding and a ceremony steeped in religious dogma, says the Reverend Jim Burch, a priest from Washington, D.C., for whom performing weddings has become a full-time job. He officiates at as many as 170 a year, charging couples who usually find him via the Internet $395 per ceremony. Burch noted that priests affiliated with a specific house of worship often expect couples to conform to the church’s views, an intimidating proposition for engaged couples who aren’t regular churchgoers.
“They have preconceived notions about churches, that they’re going to be rigid, that they’re going to be judgmental,” Burch said. “They’re probably mostly right. They will be judged, and they will be excoriated for their lifestyle.”
Freelance priests are more likely than their traditional counterparts to understand and adapt to a couple’s wishes. For example, the Nabers’ wedding ceremony didn’t contain the word “God” at their request. “He was so willing to work with us,” Amy Naber said of the priest that performed her wedding. “He asked ‘What’s important to you?’ and he tailored what he said around that.”
But being a click away from a priest can have its drawbacks. The criteria needed to legally perform weddings vary from state to state and are sometimes scant. Rabbi Ross said his home state of New York is “relatively stringent,” but “there are some other states that have almost no rules at all.” In California, Ross said, a person with no qualifications at all can apply for permission to be a one-day officiant, “and you could marry your friends.”
And even if a priest or minister may legally perform marriages, that doesn’t ensure that those marriages will be recognized by a given church. Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, has seen cases in which couples discover that their ceremony is invalid in the eyes of the Catholic faith. “There is an emotional toll, and we’ve seen it,” he said. “It’s been a big problem.”
The best way to avoid ending up with a priest you’re not comfortable with is to meet them face-to-face. For the Nabers, their priest’s willingness to meet them was a major selling point.
“I always tell people,” the Reverend Burch said, “come on in, talk to me. We’ll get to know each other a little bit.”
“If the guy won’t meet with them, that’s a red flag,” said the Rev. Bob Schneider, a minister who advertises exclusively online (with the exception of three annual mailings) and performs approximately 150 weddings yearly.