An African cardinal asks a good question: What about Communion for polygamists?

Jan 7, 2017 by Jill

by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, Catholic Herald:

Virtually every priest who has worked in Africa knows that this is a serious pastoral issue

Every now and then someone says something interesting on Twitter. Just yesterday Cardinal Napier, the Archbishop of Durban, reminded us all of something we ought not to forget.

If Westerners in irregular situations can receive Communion, are we to tell our polygamists & other “misfits” that they too are allowed?

Cardinal Napier describes a real and pressing question: polygamy is widespread in Africa, and Catholics in the West cannot ignore this. Catholic teaching and practice must be such that they are able to be inculturated in a wide variety of settings. An initiative might go down well in Berlin or Vienna, but how will it play in Peoria, or Nairobi, or Durban, or Delhi or Manila? No one particular local Church has a monopoly on truth, and no one particular local culture can claim to have absolute insights that other cultures have to take on board. Cultural imperialism cannot be Catholic. When the missionaries came to Africa, they aimed – at their best – to introduce the Gospel of Christ, not Western culture.

But just as Western cultural insight cannot claim a monopoly on Christianity, African culture too must adapt to Christ and not the other way around, for Christ is the absolute value, and while the cultures of Africa are of value too, they are such only relatively speaking. Hence, on coming to Africa, the missionaries challenged certain deep-rooted cultural practices and did their very best to stamp them out. Missionaries in Kenya, for example, have fought against female genital mutilation for a century. And they have also condemned throughout Africa the practice of polygamy.

Read here