The Congolese priest Égide Muziazia (Tumikia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1981), presbyter of the diocese of Münster and doctor in Theology from the university of that city, where he teaches at the Institute of Religious Pedagogy and Pastoral Theology, has published an extensive article on the theological portal feinschwarz.net. In it, he takes African polygamy as an example of what he calls the contextual nature of all pastoral action. The portal katholisch.de published the text last Tuesday, October 13.
A social institution, not a moral failing
“Polygamy in Africa is neither a mere moral failing nor a sign of moral backwardness,” writes Muziazia. For the theologian, it is a social institution linked to kinship networks, clan alliances, and the transmission of life, because African marriage primarily unites two families. Historically, it ensured offspring and agricultural labor. It also served to protect widows and orphans through levirate marriage.
The author harshly criticizes missionary action. In his view, requiring monogamy as a condition for baptism caused a head-on cultural clash. Many “surplus” wives were repudiated, something he describes as an injustice committed in the name of the Gospel. He acknowledges, however, that contemporary polygamy, mostly informal, barely retains those functions. He attributes it to urbanization, wage labor, and precarity. He also recalls that there are still widows subjected to forced levirate.
What the SECAM document says
Muziazia praises the final report The Pastoral Challenge of Polygamy. It was prepared by a commission of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) and published by the General Secretariat of the Synod on March 24. He describes it as the culmination of a long process. In it, a pastoral practice established for decades in African Churches now receives theological reflection and collegial support. He maintains that this practice should be taken as a locus theologicus, since in it the sensus fidei of the faithful would have been expressed before the episcopal formulation.
The article highlights the welcome, accompaniment, and more intense catechumenate proposed in the report. It also underscores the justice due to women not chosen as wives and to their children. It does not, however, address the doctrinal core of the text. According to the official communiqué, the document reaffirms that Christian marriage is monogamous by theological nature and not by cultural imposition. It also excludes any form of recognition of polygamy. And it recommends not baptizing polygamous catechumens before they freely assume monogamous marriage.
From Kinshasa to Munich
The part that katholisch.de does not include is probably the most relevant. Muziazia maintains that the contextual perspective also illuminates Western debates. He mentions the preaching of the laity, the blessing of couples in so-called irregular situations, the opening of ecclesial offices to women, the reorganization of parish leadership, and the German Synodal Way. He considers that they are discussed in legal terms when they are, in reality, pastoral questions.
The theologian points to a parallel. In January 2024, SECAM declared, invoking the African context, that the blessings of Fiducia supplicans could not be applied on the continent. Now, according to Muziazia, those same Churches are asking that polygamy be examined from that context. He concludes that no continent can universalize its own response, and that European theology alone had the historical power to present itself as a universal norm. “What holds for Kinshasa, Johannesburg, or Nairobi does not hold in the same way for Munich, Paris, or Chicago,” he writes.
The author clarifies that “this does not mean that context dissolves the norm.” The universal norm needs to take root in contexts, and these need the norm so as not to become a prison. His final formula: “Catholicity is not uniformity, but communion of contexts.”
In both cases the author equates, the African bishops appealed to their cultural reality in the same direction. They did so to refrain from applying the blessings of Fiducia supplicans and to reaffirm monogamous marriage.