Vatican defends marriage against polygamy and polyamory

The Vatican issued a document defending marriage as a monogamous relationship and addressing the pastoral challenges caused by conversion to Catholicism of people in polygamous situations, following a request to address the issue from African bishops.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published Una Caro – “One Flesh: In Praise of Monogamy” – on 25 November.

The document originated from a request made during the Synod on Synodality for African bishops to prepare a statement on polygamy. The DDF said earlier this month that the African bishops asked the Holy See for guidance on the issue.

In the document, the dicastery says it also wanted to provide a deeper reflection on monogamy in the face of growing “public forms of non-monogamous unions sometimes called ‘polyamory’” in the West.

“Polygamy, adultery, or polyamory are based on the illusion that the intensity of the relationship can be found in the succession of partners,” it says.

The text illustrates this using the myth of Don Juan, an unbridled seducer whose womanising leads him to hell, which demonstrates that “multiplying partners in a supposed total union means fragmenting the meaning of marital love”. It also draws on the writing of poets Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Rabindranath Tagore and Emily Dickinson, as well as Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

The document, signed by Pope Leo XIV focuses on the unitive aspect of marriage: “A communion of love and life shared by both spouses, a communion that is not oriented solely toward procreation, but also toward the integral good of both.” The text emphasises that “properly understood, monogamy is not simply the opposite of polygamy”.

Drawing from the teachings of John Paul II, the Vatican affirms that “only monogamy guarantees that sexuality develops within a framework of recognising the other as a subject with whom one shares one’s life entirely, a subject who is an end in himself and never a means to one’s own needs. Sexual union, which involves the whole person, can treat the other as a person, that is, as a co-subject of love and not an object of use, only if it develops within the framework of a unique and exclusive belonging.”

“Those who give themselves fully and completely to the other can only be two,” the text states, after noting that in non-monogamous relationships everyone “would be treated as means and not as persons”.

The text makes it clear that placing sexuality within the framework of a love that “unites spouses in a single friendship” does not imply a “devaluation of sexual pleasure”. Rather, “by orienting it toward self-giving, it is not only enriched but also enhanced”.

Thus, “sexuality is no longer the release of an immediate need, but a personal choice that expresses the totality of the person”.

The Vatican criticises contemporary culture that reduces sexuality to consumption: “Various problems have arisen from an excessive and uncontrolled pursuit of sex, or from the simple denial of its procreative purpose.”

Therefore, the Vatican defends openness to life in sexual union as a form of expression of “conjugal charity”, without requiring that every act explicitly have that purpose.

On an anthropological level, the document insists that “the defence of monogamy is also a defence of the dignity of women”, since “the unity of marriage implies, therefore, a free choice on the part of the woman, who has the right to demand exclusive reciprocity”.

The document also addresses sexual violence, which it says proliferates on social media, and invites Catholics to provide education on “faithful and monogamous love”.

“Education in monogamy is not a moral restriction, but rather an initiation into the grandeur of a love that transcends immediacy,” it says.

The text offers a broad overview of the Christian tradition that has upheld and reflected upon marital unity. It quotes popes and Church fathers, including St John Chrysostom, who saw in marital unity an antidote to “unbridled sexual abandon, without love or fidelity”.

Citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the text also considers the challenges for those who, desiring to convert to the Catholic faith, must navigate complex family situations. In addition to Africa, the document cites Asia, specifically India, where “monogamy has generally been the norm and has been considered an ideal in married life”, but polygamous relationships have also been present.

Africa’s Catholic bishops issued a document earlier this year with six pastoral guidelines for how to welcome people in polygamous situations into the Church, both while upholding Church teaching on marriage and not leaving women and children vulnerable to abandonment and poverty.

At the 4 August assembly of the Symposium of Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) in Kigali, Rwanda, Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Cameroon’s Bamenda Catholic Archdiocese clarified that during the deliberations at the Synod on Synodality, “Polygamy was not brought up as an African concept to be approved. It was brought up as a challenge to Christian marriage in Africa.”

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