Cardinal Ambongo sets out roadmap for polygamy text
Africa’s bishops will discuss a draft document on the subject next summer
Africa’s bishops will discuss a draft document on the Church’s pastoral response to polygamy in July 2025, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo announced Wednesday.
Addressing participants in the synod on synodality’s second session Oct. 2, the president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) said the document would offer “a comprehensive answer” to the question “What is the most appropriate form of pastoral care to support people in polygamous relationships?”
He said that SECAM’s standing committee had developed a four-phase plan for the document’s development.
In the first phase, a working group of experts identified “certain fundamental elements for an appropriate pastoral response” to polygamy.
Ambongo, the Archbishop of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, noted that polygamy appeared in two forms: “polygyny, the marriage of a man with several wives, and polyandry, the marriage of a woman with several husbands.”
He said the practice also varied in scale, from two to three wives, to more than 10 wives, in the case of traditional chiefs.
“On the other hand, in modern Africa, we are witnessing the emergence of new forms of polygamy through new forms of cohabitation involving children recognized as legitimate,” he noted.
The cardinal underlined that the Catholic Church in Africa upheld monogamy. “However, affirming the doctrinal elements is not enough,” he said. “Pastoral accompaniment for polygamists is urgently needed.”
Ambongo, who played a leading role in opposition to the Vatican’s declaration on same-sex blessings, Fiducia supplicans, said the Church faced two main scenarios.
In the first, baptized Catholics engaged in polygamy while continuing to take part in Church activities and have parish responsibilities.
In the second, unbaptized people living in polygamy were drawn to the Church.
“In both cases, a respectful and fraternal dialogue must be established between these people and the pastor, the representative of the merciful Christ who goes in search of the sheep lying in spiritual or existential peripheries,” the cardinal said.
After the working group creates a draft document, the second phase will begin, with the text’s distribution to African bishops’ conferences for comment.
Ambongo said this stage was significant because “the prevalence and characteristics of polygamy vary considerably from region to region.”
In the second stage, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith will also be asked to comment on the text.
In the third phase, African bishops attending SECAM’s July 2025 plenary meeting will review the draft together.
If the bishops approve the document, the fourth phase will begin with the text’s submission to the doctrinal dicastery, “for additional theological and doctrinal guidance,” Ambongo said.
Polygamy emerged as an issue in the working document for the “continental stage” of the global synodal process, published in October 2022.
The text said: “Among those who ask for a more meaningful dialogue and a more welcoming space we also find those who, for various reasons, feel a tension between belonging to the Church and their own loving relationships, such as: remarried divorcees, single parents, people living in a polygamous marriage, LGBTQ people, etc.”
At the synod on synodality’s first session in October 2023, the term did not appear in an early draft of the concluding “synthesis report.”
But the final text urged SECAM to “promote a theological and pastoral discernment on the question of polygamy and the accompaniment of people in polygamous unions who are coming to faith.”
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 this is the crux of the issue:
"In his testimony, Justin argued that polygamy is the foundation of faith in Africa and warned about the risk of alienation should the Catholic Church insist on monogamy.
“Belief is a religion; religion on the other hand is culture, and our culture here in Africa is polygamy,” the father of 12 said, and added, “As Africans, we believe that polygamy is wealth and a source of blessings.” "
I'm sure that the Aztecs would have said that human sacrifice is a "source of blessings," too, and that slave holders in the Ante Bellum south would have said slaves are a source of "wealth."
And the Romans and Greeks would have definitely said that men having sexual access to anything they could claim ownership was their "culture."
If being a Christian means being counter-cultural, I know what the obvious Christian reaction to polygamy is.
I find this particular statement of Cdl. Ambongo's especially interesting:
“However, affirming the doctrinal elements is not enough,” he said. “Pastoral accompaniment for polygamists is urgently needed.”
Replace 'polygamists' with 'LGBT people' or 'divorced and remarried people' and you get a statement that could easily come from Cdl. McElroy or Cdl. Cupich. I don't venture to claim an equivalency between Cdl. Ambongo and his American brethren, but the similarity in language is fascinating.
Polygamy (fundamentalist Mormon sects notwithstanding) is not really a problem in the West. The concept of having multiple legal spouses is pretty weird to us—in part because people that want multiple sexual partners often also want at-will commitment and no kids. The idea of 'pastorally accompanying' polygamists would seem both weird and unnecessary, and polygamy itself, with our individualist culture and obsession with sexual autonomy, would probably strike many as 'icky', to say the least. On the other hand, homosexuality and divorce are extremely common, which tends to make even people who disagree with it more habituated to its existence, and puts many people in the position of knowing or caring for someone in such a situation.
I think the situation is reversed in many parts of Africa, at least from Cdl. Ambongo's perspective. Homosexuality is less common and 'ickier' than polygamy, because polygamy is culturally established, and many African Catholics are likely to know someone in a polygamous relationship. Suddenly, pastoral accompaniment for such people seems wise and necessary, but no quarter should be given to those weird corrupting Western vices like homosexuality.
I don't mean to draw an exact equivalency here between Ambongo and McElroy or Cupich, nor between homosexuality, divorce, and polygamy. However, I think it's worthwhile to note the ways in which our responses to particular vices and issues can be as heavily conditioned by familiarity and gut response as by Church teaching.