Late last year, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued Una Caro a document praising monogamy. Monogamy is indeed a praiseworthy institution and not one to be taken for granted these days when everything seems up for grabs. In my seminar on marriage last semester, a student brought to my attention the story of a Protestant pastor in Berlin blessing a “marriage” of four men. And I know from the discussions about marriage in my introduction to the sacraments class at the Gregorian University that polygamy remains a real pastoral challenge in many parts of the globe.
I was happy to be able to review Una caro in the latest issue of La Civiltà Cattolica, adding some insights from recent sociological studies on marriage by Brad Wilcox, Mark Regnerus, and the Belgian sexologist Thérèse Hargot. These sort of studies cannot substitute for a theology of marriage, but they do provide an invaluable supplement to it, if for no other reason than that they help to dispel some of the myths used to deride the Christian vision of marriage.
After I finished the article for Civiltà, I looked up one of Regnerus’s earlier books Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy (Oxford 2017). It’s a sobering read, but it does provide some interesting data on monogamy which I wasn’t able to include in the article. Here’s a paragraph from a very fine section in which Regnerus explains the historical puzzle of “why monogamous arrangements comprise a historical minority of the globe’s societies, but the vast majority of the more successful and flourishing ones”:
Monogamy also means confidence in the biological link between mother, father, and child, a combination long known to reduce the threat of abuse, violence, and homicide in the household. And monogamy means greater equality–more men and women have the opportunity to meet, marry, save, and invest for the long term, instead of competing (and spending resources, etc.) for others’ available attention. This is why monogamous marriage systems preceded the emergence of democratic institutions in Europe, and the rise of notions like human rights and equality between the sexes. This ‘package of norms and institutions that constitute modern monogamous marriage systems spread across Europe, and then the globe,’* precisely because it competed well. Monogamy, after all, is disciplined–by definition. No other form of organizing relationships between the sexes does a better job of fostering a fair exchange between the interests of men and women. Societies that disregard monogamous norms undermine their own long-term interests.
*From J. Henrich, R. Boyd, P.J. Richerson, “The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (2012).
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Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 