¹ Political theologians such as J. B. Metz do not like it. They find that the Church, oblivious like a bully, to the fact that she is being egged on by a crowd of socio‐cultural pressures, picks on those she knows she can beat, fighting shy all the while of explosive political issues for fear they blow up in her face. But by picking on the moral or personal dimensions to human problems and even then on aspects other than those of truth, justice and liberty, the Church privatises and spiritualises what are basically socio‐economic matters. Contraception, for instance, is not primarily a problem of subjective sexual morality but is above all the result of objective injustices perpetrated by the capitalist system, such as lack of housing or unemployment.

² It has been suggested that the ‘no surrender’ attitude of Humanae Vitae, stemmed in part from Rome's reluctance to reverse previous rulings and thus upset unfairly those who had abided by the party line.

³ In the town of Lugny in the diocese of Autun, this is no longer theory but practice. Out of 70 couples who came to ask for the sacrament in 1973, 40 opted for a blessing on their desire to found a foyer, as they did not feel their attitude to marriage coincided with that canonised by the sacrament. Cf. Information Catholique Internationales, n. 465, 1.10.1974, p. 28–29 and La Vie Catholique, n. 1520. 25.10.1974, p. 14–15.

⁴ ‘Qu’ on le veuille ou non, le mariage coutumier, tel qu’ il est vécu, surtout dans la situation actuelle ?evolution. n'est pas apte à exprimer la plénitude du mariage Chrétien’. B. Tenailleau, Mariage coutumier et Eglise, Spiritus, n. 55. Janvier 1974, p. 39.

⁵ In days when even the most sacred of a priori assumptions appear to be collapsing before the results of a posteriori research it would be rash to take anything for granted until Popper's last word had been said, i.e., until it had finally proved impossible to demonstrate the statement's falsity. Many of the statements in this article should be read as queries to which it is not possible to give apodictically certain answers. It is impossible, however, not because of insufficient information but simply because, epistemologically speaking, at the level of the plausibility of postulates either the penny drops or it doesn ‘t, either you see it or you don't. In the moral theologian's textbooks, a tile was forever falling on the head of a passerby. There are at least three ways of accounting for this according to one's initial assumptions. Either it fell on me because a witch had it in for me, or it fell on me simply because of bad luck, or it fell on me because of divine Providence. There is no absolutely sure way of proving which of the three explanations, the primitive, the agnostic or the deeply religious is right. Each of us lives within mental worlds which are self‐explanatory and self‐confirmatory within their appointed horizons. One cannot step with inductive logical smoothness from one world to another. The overall credibility of one's outlook can crumble slowly or collapse suddenly before the plausibility of alternative persoectives, but one can never move between universes without some kind of intuitive leap beyond the power of irrefutable logic. Consequently we will not be trying to prove our point of view in these pages but only to persuade people that it is plausible.

⁶ Historians seem to have noticed the Church's moral selectivity as early if not earlier than the theologians, as regards polygamy and slavery. Professor J. F. Ade Aiayi observes that ‘what is surprising is the relative emphasis the missionaries placed on (polygamy) in the middle of the nineteenth century in comparison with, e.g., domestic slavery they did not condone slavery, but they regarded it as a social evil to be reformed with time (whereas polygamy was) declared a direct violation of the laws of God which had to be rejected by the faithful ab initio’. Christian Missions in Nigeria: 1841–1891, London, 1965, p. 103–108.

⁷ If one can imagine a car owner saying: ‘I would like to put more air in but the manufacturer said 20 lbs. and no more’, one can also imagine the future African Pope about whom the magazines speculate, privately admitting and apologetically, that if it had been left to him, he would have sacramentalised polygamy too, but the Church's Founder drew the line at monogamy.

⁸ Even if Christ really did believe that this was his mission it would not advance the argument much further, since he believed literally in a lot of other things which we no longer believe in in quite the same way. A.v. one would have to account for the criteria which allow for it now to be theologically respectable not to take Christ at his word when he speaks about the Devil but which demand on the contrary that when he spoke about monogamy his words must be taken at their face value.

⁹ There are societies, for example, where not to take the wife of one's deceased brother, even though one is already married, would be to condemn her either to an unnatural widowhood or to a life of impecunious prostitution. In such a society a man could use the Christian commandment to justify an unchristian refusal to help his neighbour. An example such as this should bring home the extent to which any application of the word ‘natural’ to what is essentially a phenomenon belonging to the human sciences, is to beg the question. In calling a certain form of the family ‘natural’ we either mean ‘that kind of family taken for granted in a given culture’ or ‘the very nature of the family is x, y and z’. To imply the latter would be to illogically apply a term proper to philosophy or rather metaphysics, to the domain of the human sciences. An example will perhaps clarify this theoretical but important point. When Mircea Eliade in order to underline the momentousness of the change initiation effects in a person's life, speaks of it as an ‘ontological break through’–'une rupture de niveau ontologique’, he is merely using metaphysical language metaphorically, in order to bring home the importance of the event. Logically, however, initiation as initiation, has nothing to do with ontology as such. Likewise in dealing with problems in the field of kinship one must be very careful not to use a term such as ‘nature’ in an ontological sense. The nature of the family and marriage can be entirely unpacked by the empirical sciences–when the theologian or exegete speaks of the nature of Christian marriage they are speaking as ethnographers of Christianity, at least in so far as they seek to state what has been the case. There is no such thing as the metaphysical nature of the marriage or the family as marriage or family–though as beings it would be possible to describe their ontological status. Unless one sees this one is likely to ontologise what merely happens to be the case as a result of cultural conditioning. Marriage is essentially a psycho‐sociological phenomenon and can only be spoken about metaphysically in a metaphorical sense. As Lonergan succinctly puts it: 'metaphysics is transcendental, an integration of heuristic structures, and not some categorical speculation that reveals that all is water, or matter, or spirit, or process, or what have you'. (Method in Theology, London, 1972, p. 25.)Google Scholar

¹⁰ Take, e.g., the case of a man whose wife abandons him after a mere week's cohabitation and disappears without trace. In rural Africa it would be inhuman to expect him not to take another wife–indeed unless he does so, he is likely to be a burden for others. The man in question–for we are alluding to a concrete case– did marry again, proved to be an excellent father to his children, a loving husband and a solid Christian as well as a pillar of the community. All found it a shame that he could not receive communion nor be a member of the parish council, indeed, the parishioners would dearly have loved to make him catechist if he had not been canonically living in a state of sin.

¹¹ A morality of the lesser of two evils ‘risque de significr qu'il existe des situations dont toute issue est un mal; que finalement on se voit contraint à pécher c ‘est la morale de la culpabilityé inéluctable. En ce sens il faut la refuser: lorsqu'un sujet conscient et libre, après mûre déliberation, décide le ‘moindre mal’ celui‐ci n'est plus un mal, mais Le Bien, purement et simplement, et il pécherait en ne le faisant pas. Voilà précisément ce qu ‘occulte ľabus des recours trop fréquents à des absolus qui interdisent la possibilityé du débat moral’. Père Roqueplo O.P., I.C.I. 1.4.1974, p. 19.

¹² We must avoid putting ourselves in need of making such peculiar post factum rationalisations as the Fathers of the Church undertook on Gods behalf. The marital morality of the. O.T. is relative but not primarily in the sense of relative to the perfection of the N.T. but relative to the socio‐economic conditions of patriarchal existence. In this sense the marital morality of the N.T. is not absolute either but relative to the conditions of the N.T. world.

¹³ This distinction partly corresponds to the classical concepts of ‘sacramentum tantum’ and ‘res sacramenti’–the sacramental ritual and the reality to be re‐enacted. Lack of space means that other important issues must be left in abeyance: the relationship between ritual and social reality, whether initially, for instance, the former reflects the latter quite closely or not; how gaps can grow between the two, how at times ritual lags behind the evolution of social life and becomes no longer representative of reality; or how, alternatively, ritual can be renewed in advance of reality and effect social change, e.g., the whole matter of inter‐communion.

¹⁴ We are not against efforts being made at this level but their limits must be recognised. It would, e.g., be a step in the right direction if the sacrament could be given at the time and place of the socio‐cultural experience of marriage. If the priest or eventually an empowered elder/catechist attended the customary marriage and inserted the sacramental rite at an opportune moment, the disastrous dichotomy now prevailing would be obviated. Marriage in the Church is paltry parallel in most parishes to the ceremonies and feasting which takes place at the bride and bridegroom's compounds. This gap could be narrowed by bringing the ‘church’ to the people.

¹⁵ Though it would not be difficult to find concrete examples, their rarity is neither here nor there. The point is that the Gospel gives guidelines and does not dictate norms. These guidelines are applicable no matter what the concrete patterns. African socialists claim to bypass the impasse of nineteenth century individualism and to recuperate at a higher level the values of primitive socialism. Might it not also be the case that Africa could point the way out of the impasse of the conjugal monogamy, by re‐inventing at a higher level of synthesis the values of the extended, polygamous household?