Judging Freedom - Is Joe & Jill Biden_s marriage legitimate in the eyes of the Catholic Church_

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

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Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, February 6, 2023. It's about three o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States.

My guest today is Father Peter Stravinskas. Father Stravinskas is the founder and superior of the Priestly Society of Blessed John, now Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman. Father Stravinskas has numerous advanced degrees as a homilist, much in demand all over the world, lectures on philosophy, theology, and canon law. The subject today is a ticklish one, not for Father Peter or for me or for any of you, but for the President of the United States. Father Peter Stravinskis, welcome to Judging Freedom, my dear friend. Good to be with you. Thank you. So, are Joe and Jill Biden validly married in the eyes of the Catholic Church? church? Well, this question has triggered a lot of research on my part because we find no pictures

of their wedding and publicity hogs that they are. One would expect thousands of pictures and a cast of thousands at the wedding. And so I did a little research and I discovered through her autobiography that they were married at the so-called UN Chapel in June of 1977. Now, it turns out, of course, that's not really a UN Chapel. It's a chapel across York Times from the previous year discussing the fact that this is a wedding, kind of a Las Vegas type of place. The minister who was the director of the chapel at the time in 1976 indicated that in that one year, he had 400 weddings, which is rather amazing when you think of it. It's more than one a day, huh? And further, that some 80% of those weddings were for what in Catholic Church we call mixed marriages, which is to say people of one faith marrying someone of another. And out of those,

the majority, he said, were for people who had encountered what he called snags in their denomination of origin. So why... Is that a liturgical term, snag? Maybe in the Methodist church it is, which he was a Methodist minister. It's certainly not a canonical term. And at any rate, it turns out that if they could have gotten permission to marry there, but then that marriage would have had to have been registered in the parish in which that building is located. Co coincidentally. So it would have been a non-Catholic marriage in a non-Catholic church, but it must be registered with the nearby Catholic church.

Do I have that right? Well, it could have actually been witnessed by a Catholic priest in that environment, but they would have needed the permission of the local bishop for this to be married in a non-Catholic venue. If it was also a non-Catholic minister, that would be yet another permission that would have been needed. But at any rate, it would have had to have been registered in, as you say, the nearby Catholic church, which coincidentally is Holy Family Church, where the pastor is your friend and mine, Father Gerald Murray. And so I contacted him and said, is that marriage registered there? And he said, no, it is not. He went on to say that there are, however, several weddings that took place

in that chapel that are registered at Holy Family Church. So why not there? Then it also came to mind, of course, Jill was previously married. She would have needed a decree of nullity for her first union. So I called the Diocese of Wilmington. Let me just stop you. Is her first marriage a Catholic marriage? Yes. Yes. So she would have needed what lay people call an enoma, a decree from the diocese in which she was married,

that in fact her marriage was not valid from the beginning. Exactly. Exactly. valid from the beginning. Exactly, exactly. And now her first marriage did take place in the parish church in Delaware, as did Joe's first marriage, okay? So I called the Diocese of Wilmington. I asked to speak to the chancellor, who was a priest. He was out for the day. The secretary asked if she could help. I told her what my questions were. And about a half hour later, I got a call from the communications director for the Diocese of Wilmington, a layman, who said, I understand you have some questions about the status of the Bidens. And I said, yes. And he said, well, Father, as a priest,

of course you would know, we can't discuss the spiritual lives of our parishioners. I said, well, I'm not asking about how many mortal sins he confessed in the sacrament of penance. I'm asking about a public sacrament. Marriage is a public sacrament, not clandestine. And I said, we know of some cases of clandestine marriages, and it didn't work too well for Romeo and Juliet. And at which point, he said, well, I'm sorry, Father, that's all I can say. Subsequent to that, I've gotten even more information, more than from the article I originally wrote for Catholic World Report, namely that their marriage in New York is registered with the city of New York. It indicates the date of the marriage and

the names of the spouses and nothing else. The rest of the record is, quote, sealed for 50 years. Does it indicate the name of the person who performed in the marriage? No, it does not. It's cut off at the point of the names. When did the 50 years start to run? In 1977? That's right. That's right. And so, as it turns out, even more so, ironically, not a half hour before you and I were to do this show, I got an email from a man who has been involved in looking up all of these records about the Bidens. And that as a matter of fact, when Jill was having marriage problems, she went to the chaplain at University of Delaware, a priest who had been there for decades, and he told her not to worry about getting divorced. The Catholic Church survived the Renaissance popes. It can survive your divorce.

Did you determine? I'm sorry. That's not Jill. That is Val, his sister, rather. I'm sorry. His sister, who was married in the same UN chapel two years before him. All right. Did you find out if the Archdiocese of New York gave permission for a non-Catholic priest to marry them at this chapel across the street from the UN? No, there's no record of such permission. So there's a record of the marriage except it's sealed and nothing appears on it except Joe and Jill's name and the date and the place. There's no recordation in a Catholic church. There is no indication of

permission from the Archdiocese of New York, in which, of course, the UN and this chapel across the street are physically located. Do you have an opinion as to whether or not Joe and Jill Biden are validly married in the eyes of the Catholic Church? Well, it would seem that if this were all kosher, as we might say, there would have been no secrecy attached to any of it. And the fact that his own sister encountered problems with a second marriage being in the church, and that she went to that UN chapel, it seems to me that this is sort of a family affair. If you have trouble with the Catholic Church about your first marriage, which he has no problem with his first marriage, but Jill does. And so it looks highly suspicious.

And so all of the talk about Joe being, quote, a devout Catholic, clutching his rosaries and all the rest of it, it then should come as no surprise that his positions on abortion are what they are, and that he himself as vice president presided over a gay wedding. So in other words, there's a whole package here. And we generally find this in the church as well, that people don't simply descend from one thing. There's a whole pattern of life. Are you familiar with this UN chapel? I've never been in it. I have no idea.

Will they marry anybody that comes along, or do they inquire about whether the person is free to marry, whether the person is still actually married to somebody else. I suspect that all they're validating is the possibility of a civil union. I don't think they care about, you know, if the person, he did, the minister in the New York Times article indicated they have a lot of Jewish Christian weddings, which of course are forbidden in Judaism, even by reformed Judaism. So obviously they don't care that the denomination of origin has a problem with the union. It's just simply that they're free to marry civilly. All right. So Jill was divorced civilly. We don't know if she had a Catholic annulment from her first husband. Joe's first marriage, of course, ended with the tragic death of his wife. The two of them were married by someone at this facility, but it's sealed and we don't know who.

And it doesn't appear to be recorded anywhere in a Catholic place of authority. That's right. If the marriage were not performed by a priest and not recorded in the Archdiocese of New York or at Father Murray's church across the street, is it a valid Catholic marriage? No. No. All right. What prompted you to start doing this research, Father?

You're a world-renowned educator. You're an educator, not an agitator. I had a, when I ran high schools, one of my nicknames the kids gave me was Father Sherlock. And so I put on my father brown uh beretta and i was just intrigued by the whole thing that it just seemed so odd that again there were no pictures of the wedding uh no serious talk about who did it have you heard of a have you heard of a valid catholic wedding having the proof of the wedding sealed for 50 years? No.

And that's sealed by the city of New York. It's the civil. In 1977, he was a senator. Why on earth would he want his record? Maybe he dreamed of being president, but it wasn't on the horizon at the time. Why on earth would he want the record of his marriage to the love of his life sealed, shielded from public view? There's no shame in it. What would be the reason for the shielding? Do you know? Well, I mean, the only thing I can conclude is that whoever the officiant was did not have standing in the Catholic Church to do this,

and therefore you've got to keep the whole thing under wraps. Brother Peter Straminskas, if you do any more research, would you come back to us, please, before you reveal it anywhere else? Good to be with you, as usual. Thanks for your time today, Father Peter. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.