Polygamy and Tyre Pressures: the Sacramentality of Customary Marriage

Abstract

The average car-owner is usually unaware that he could safely put twice as much pressure in his tyres than that stipulated as ideal in the manufacturer’s manual, without having them explode in his face. What would happen where he to be appraised of this possibility? He would probably be less apprehensive of his tyres bursting when he sees a lackadaisical garage boy nonchalantly filling them. He would certainly not exceed the specified norm each time he had occasion to put some air in his tyres.What they (mis)take for the Maker’s absolute norm regarding Christian marriage, fascinates many Churchmen as fearfully as the tyre manufacturer’s presumed upper limit. The average pastor assumes that one cannot sacramentalise beyond monolithic monogamy without destroying dogma if not the natural ideal of the family itself. Yet too neat a notion of what the Natural Law allows, coupled with a naive understanding of Revealed Truth, can block an adequate and adapted pastoral approach to marriage in the same way that a literal reading of the maker’s instructions can prevent a suitably supple attitude towards tyre filling. In both instances a perspective is urgently needed which will liberate people’s minds. Both the pastor worried about polygamy and the car-owner concerned with his tyres would benefit from a point of view which would free them from false fears. But in neither case would these new horizons automatically entail practical excesses. The car-owner’s new-found knowledge would not lead him to put twice as much air in his tyres at the first opportunity. Likewise a priest’s new awareness that customary marriage is perhaps already really sacramental, and therefore sacramentalisable, would not normally lead him to impose his insight regardless of pastoral common sense.