ARE YOU FOR OR AGAINST POLYGAMY?

In the beginning, God created a man (Adam) and then saw that he was very lonely; God decided to create a woman (Eve) out of the ribs of the man. The woman was given to the man as a wife and God blessed them to live as husband and wife (not husband and wives) to bear children. Years later, the man, because of lust and greed, thought he could not have just one wife. There have always been so many beautiful women since the beginning of time. Hence, because of lust, some men would want to keep the beautiful ones for themselves. This is one of the reasons why they end up as polygamists. As a catholic Christian, I believe a man should have just one wife. Thus a man must leave his parents and join in holy matrimony with his wife and they become one. Catholic Christians do not contract polygamous marriage. The catholic doctrine condemns it. Any catholic Christian who has contracted a polygamous marriage is limited according to the said doctrine. The man or the woman in this case is not allowed to take the holy sacrament. If for one reason or the other, the man decides to start receiving the Holy Communion, he will have to separate with his wives and take just one of them to be wedded in the church. It is only then that he and the wedded wife will be allowed to receive the communion. What then will happen to the rest of the wives and children? Love cannot be shared. When a man decides to take one of his wives to the church, it is because he loved and preferred her from the other wives. We could see therefore that he did not have equal love for his wives. This as we know, could arouse jealousy among the wives and even children. Hence, there may be chaos, hatred and disorder in the whole household. A case in point is what happened here in Cameroon where I was an eye witness. A catholic Christian who was a polygamist for many years with two wives, decided to get married in church. He had to choose one of his wives for the wedding. Of course he chose the one he loved and cherished best. It was a pathetic situation. When I think of what happened, I would rather wish polygamy be abolished if not in Africa in general where it is mostly practiced, in Cameroon in particular. The wife who was abandoned with her children went hysterical. The wedding almost did not take place. It was postponed on two occasions because all the parties involved had to receive some counselling most especially the woman who had to lick her wounds in consternation. A most recent case I witness was similar to the first. The only difference was that the abandoned woman here hardly knew what was happening until when the wedding had already taken place. One could imagine the wickedness of the man and the shock the woman had when she heard of the wedding especially as they

were not living in the same town. If you have never been in a polygamous home you will not understand its problems. My own father was a polygamist. He had about five wives or more. The truth is that I do not really know the exact number of wives he had because they lived in separate homes. As I earlier mentioned, he was a typical example of a man who got married to many women because of lust and greed. One of the consequences of this was that he hardly knew all his children let alone knowing their names. Can you imagine that some of us (his children) were usually introduced by other people who knew the family better than us? It was a real big shame. I am only afraid that worst should not happen. That is that one day some of his two children get married. May God forbid that! Men are not as happy in this type of marriage as one may imagine. Polygamy can be disadvantageous even to men. Some women, plot their husband when he does not treat them fairly. In some cases, the women become very good friends and they concert and connive to ill-treat their husband. They may decide to ruin him in one way or the other. This may even lead to death. Men, who are aware of this, do everything to separate their wives and create disunity to avoid such situations. The men usually end up regretting their polygamous life and in the long run, they keep away from home because of freight and frustration. Polygamy cannot therefore be of any good to anybody be it the husband, the wives and the children.