Sherry Weddell comments on this piece about the challenge of polygamy in the rapidly Christianizing Global South:
One of the realities of an immense and growing Catholic Church in Africa is that a whole new set of unfamiliar but serious pastoral issues are being faced. One of which is polygamy. What do you do if your catechist/convert grandfather who helped found the Catholic community had seven wives, 45 children . . . and a priest son?
“The working document for the synod on synodality’s second session, taking place Oct. 2-27, noted that on April 25 this year, SECAM announced the creation of “a special commission to discern the theological and pastoral implications of polygamy for the Church in Africa.”African theologians have addressed polygamy during a series of online synodal conversations held earlier this year.
During one conversation, a father of 12 with two wives described how he participated in Church life in South Sudan’s Diocese of Tombura-Yambio. He is unable to receive Holy Communion due to his polygamous situation, but is a member of several groups overseeing the diocese’s development.
“My grandfather had seven wives and 45 children,” he said, according to ACI Africa. “In 1912, when missionaries set foot where our diocese now is, it was my grandfather who helped them to establish the church.”
“He was trained as a catechist and taught catechism in the church. One of his children eventually became a priest. He was never sidelined even as a polygamous man.”
I think Sherry is, as is her custom, prescient. One of the difficulties the Church has faced all through its history is what to prioritize when Christian ideals meet real-world ingrained cultural expectations and customs.
How, for example, does the Church present the teaching on the Eucharist to a culture that has practiced ritual cannibalism (as nearly all cannibalism is when it occurs).
How does the Church bear witness to its moral standards, not only when they seem too rigorous (as is often the case in our culture) but (just as often throughout her history) when they seem too lax, soft, wussy, and unmanly (as was often the case in times dominated by hyper-rigorists such as Donatists and Jansenists).
It seems to me that an awful lot of Christians in the rapidly de-Christianizing West simply assume that because of our Christian(ish) heritage, we should be able to take for granted in our audience moral assumptions that they in no way share, precisely because they do not share the Christian metaphysical assumptions about God and the human person and nature that that have been second nature in the West for centuries.
Conversely, many who imagine they are deeply Christian merely because they parrot a few half truths about abortion and/or hate the sort of people Republicans hate are stone blind to the fact that more gospel assumptions about the dignity of the human person survive in the hearts and minds of self-proclaimed atheists who refuse to mock the disabled, indulge in racism and misogyny, celebrate cruelty to the weak, and worship Mammon (like “prolife Christian” Donald Trump) than in the prostituted Thing That Used to Be American Conservative Christianity.
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20 Responses
Polygamy is traditional in parts of Africa. It will take decades of hard work to eliminate it. The big question is, how to deal with people who claim to be “Catholic” yet practice polygamy? It will be a long, difficult effort.
I cannot imagine having more than one wife. One boss is quite enough. No thanks.
Its often crossed my mind when watching romantic comedies or dramas, where the main plot revolves around a guy having to choose between two or more women, that cultures different from ours in that regard would look at the whole thing and go: “So what’s the conflict? Can’t he just marry them all and problem solved?”
I also don’t think western society is as exempt from the idea polygamy as one might think at first glance. I’m reminded of this article I read a while back on the aftermath of Obergefell:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicauthenticity/2015/06/hooray-for-same-sex-concubinage/
Point is, we did have a name for what is, functionally speaking, a polygamous relationship. We just didn’t call it “marriage”.
Its also occurred to me that the economic and social pressures being applied by the conservative’s preferred policies, might bring about, for purely pragmatic reasons, the emergence of arrangements where one spouse stays at home to care for the kids, while the other two go out into the workforce to earn an income.
I have no skin in the game regarding either outcome, but seeing the right-wing getting basically hoisted by their own petard would be quite funny.
One of the families we are friends with has basically that sort of arrangement – family has 3 adults, 2 kids. One husband, two wives (but both of the wives are bi, so no one-sided relationships in the group). Each mom gave birth once. One of the wives has primary responsibility for the house and the kids while the other two both work full-time. Last I heard they had switched up the legal arrangement so that the two women were married to each other (to ensure health insurance coverage for both kids through the one working mom’s job).
Anyway, seems to be working out for them!
Huh. How about that? I guess its no longer a hypothetical, lol!
A Nigerian chieftain once encouraged my husband to take another wife right in front of me. He did however pause to regard me when he learned that I’d produced six male sons. He did not appreciate my impertinence for weighing in on the matter. The Jewish lady that had flown him over to hang out with her clearly had a thing for him. I have to admit that he was a head turner in his red tartan skirt and gold bicep bracelet.
It’s fascinating what money can buy you when you are a wealthy Bay Area woman. She definitely won that round with her bored, sexually liberated friends. How can you top that?
I think the Church already tackled this problem in the past. Rulers who had wives took concubines who produced children who were later recognized and even made heirs.
I’m not saying the problem was tackled successfully, but it already appeared in the past.
Back to today, in cases of remarriage after divorce or in cases when there are illegitimate children with affair partners, when people return to the Church, it is common pastoral advice to make sure that all children are justly cared for and that the former spouse is adequately provided for beyond that which is dictated by court. In case of extramarital partners, sexual relations should cease, but the former partner and her children likewise need to be provided for.
That would probably be the easiest way to handle polygamy, although it needs to be asked which wife then is the legitimate one, and there’s no clear answer to that given that all wives have the same legitimate claim to being the only legal wife.
There’s no clear answer to what would happen to the practice of polygamy. Best that could happen is by God’s grace the practice would cease overnight with no ill will, but our contrarian nature probably precludes that much grace.
Pretty crazy that Solomon had 1000 wives and concubines. What a fall from grace after asking God for wisdom.
Is it though? I know Solomon gets rebuked for veering off into idolatry, but is there any indication that the polygamy, in and of itself, was considered to be sinful at the time?
Indeed. The people of the Old Testament slowly learnt what God wanted, and to obey him. Jesus says, regarding the OT laws allowing divorce, that it was for the “hardness of their hearts” that God permitted it.
Solomon was a first millennium eastern Mediterranean king. Kings do glory – many wives, many sons. It seems to me that Solomon’s defect was not adultery but pride and a big ego.
@ JJ, maybe it was the syphilis that got him.
@3vilstriker, come on, even common sense in their era would say it was a bad idea.
Have you ever watched any period-piece Korean drama shows? Oftentimes, the backdrop revolves around the different palace intrigues surrounding the emperor and his concubines. In this setting, there is more of a transactional nature to these arrangements, where the women come from the families of merchants, nobility and high-ranking military officials. They served primarily as a a way to cement political alliances and mutually exert power on different spheres of influence.
Back then, businesses were pretty much a family affair, more so than now, so for the upper class, marriage was really more akin to a company merger or partnership. So in this cultural context, sending one of your daughters to the ruler, to serve as a concubine, would’ve been the equivalent of getting the family/business approved and favored by the state.
My point is, that to the extent that these cultures might’ve been analogous in that way, then portraying Solomon as having 1000 wives and concubines might’ve not necessarily have been meant as a reflection of his unquenchable lust and hedonistic lifestyle, but as an indication of his power, connections and influence.
It’s interesting that the sin of Solomon was considered just about faith, not sexual overindulgence. It makes me wonder to what degree western thought has veered off course.
I haven’t seen a good Korean period piece. Any suggestions?
I think syphilis came from the Americas 😉
I wish I hadn’t googled it. My guess is that they had something similar, as the internet claims that all mammals carry STIs.
Didn’t Solomon go a bit crazy at the end?
The New World origin hypothesis for syphilis has been the dominant theory, but last I new it wasn’t considered totally settled science. What we know is that the disease we know as syphilis was first recorded in an unambiguous way after the Columbus voyages and then ran riot through Europe thereafter. It manifested in very horrible ways generally worse than seen today the way diseases brand new to a population often do. There is evidence the disease did in fact exist in the Americas before Columbus.
On the other hand, there were illnesses known to be caused in the old world long before by an organism which is genetically very similar if not functionally identical to the spirochete bacteria that causes syphilis. Those old world illnesses did not really behave the way classic syphilis does. They were more skin related if I recall. But scientists also think they have found bones of the medieval period that display signs of actual syphilis. There’s a line of thought that maybe these bacteria evolved into the more classic venereal presentation due to climate and different living conditions among host populations.
@tacoanybody: I’m currently watching “The Apothecary Diaries” on Crunchyroll. Its an animated series, but it has the same backdrop I referenced earlier. You can watch the entire first season for free without a premium account.
Ashkenazi Jews ended polygamy about a millennium ago. The teaching point stressed that polygamous marriages in Scripture weren’t very happy. Polygamy was still practiced by Jews in Yemen until there were still Jews there. The West practices monogamy in marriage because it is a Roman custom. This custom has now spread to even the Muslim world; only a handful of countries permit polygamy for Muslims.
The more civilized Muslim countries that do allow polygamy limit the number of wives to four and requires that before marrying another wife, the prospective husband must prove that he’s able to provide for all his wives and children.
AFAIR, Egypt requires that each wife has her separate household and shared households are not allowed.
As usual, though, rules can be bent for the ruling class where men can have harems with multiple wives and concubines.
The Torah sets no limit to the number of wives a man can have. In the Qur’an, a man can marry up to four women, but only if he can treat each of them equally and fairly. (Because it might be impossible to treat multiple wives completely equally and fairly, many Muslims interpret the Qur’an as saying that a man may marry only one wife.)
This really isn’t solely a Global South thing. There is a lot of it going on in the West and right here in this country. The bulk of it is not polygamy in the classic sense with one patriarch and a bunch of sister wives. I mean that happens too, but far more are termed “polyamorous” which tends to have more varied and egalitarian in nature. It’s come to the fore in popular culture of late, but I don’t think it’s really a rapidly growing thing so much as more visible. Around 5% of the population practices non-monogamy in some way.
I would not presume to say what the Catholic Church should do about it as I’m not Catholic nor Christian though I do have that background. Unless such a family is a member of the church I would say there’s not much to do other than live with it.
Probably the smartest thing to do these days is to take allies where you find them. Most poly people I’ve known are definitely not MAGA oriented and on basic social justice issues at least, are probably far more in line with Catholic values than much of what terms itself Christianity these days.