'Christian' Polygamy

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 40, 5 October 1905, Page 1

'Christian ' Polygamy

In a memorable speech delivered at Oxford in 1864, IMsTaeli sketched in with a few master-touches the 'flitting scene of .spiritual phantasmagoria ' that has come o\er non-Catholic Christendom through the misunderstanding- and misuse of the Inspired Record. Referling' to Fngla'ml, he said : ' There are no tenets however r\iral\ agant, and no practice however objectionable, we may not. in time develop under such a state of aftairs— <o'ptini( ns the most absurd and ceremonies the most revolting — ' " Qualia demens Aegyptus portenta colit,"—

perh&pjs to be relieved by the incantations of Canidia and the Oorybaintiain howl.' The history of the past three hundred years furnishes abundant justification for even the hornet-sting in) tjhe tail of Disraeli's remarks. We recently gave some modern instances in point. Another contemporary) instance is furnished by the July-September issue of the ' Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society ' '(.vol. xx., jios. 7-9, 1904, p. 10ft). In the course of an article on ' The Development of West Africa,' the Rev P. A. McDeriuoti, C.S. Sp , of Omit&ha (S. Nigeria), writes as follows on the ' Promiscuous Distribution of the! Gld\ Testament ' .— 1 But before I leave the question of polygamy, I cannot conscientiously omit to allude here, though with the utmost delicacy and the 'deepest * respect for the motives! -tifraJt inspire it, to the practice, on the part of some religious societies, of the promiscuous and indiscriminate distribution of the books of the Old Testament. It is undeniable that it has greatly contributed to strengthen among those people and even to propagate polygamy. Now that they arc learning how to road' — afnd, unless in the very remote interior, you will rarely find a village without one or more young men, able to do so*— they will only be attracted to the reading of such of those numerous passages of the Old Testament as would tend almost to consecrate that practice in their untutored and nakirally corrupt minds, umahle yet to discriminate between the Old Testament in itself and the New Testament, by which it has been modified and supplemented, not to say corrected.' Wa find the testimony given alx^e borne out as to substance Its Dr Ncedham Cust's ' Missionary Methods ' (pp. 38-39), as regards Lagos amd Sierra Leone, in West ■Africa. Dr. Cust iis himself a Prat est.au t. He is, perhaps, tJhe greatest living authority on non-Catholic mission-fiellds. And, curiously rn.ough, he strenuously pleads for tlhe recognition of the plurality of wi\e<s byi Christian missionaries in all countries in which the [practice is legally established ' But he might easily plead in extenuation the example of sundry great ' Reformers ' to winch, no doubt, he attached uncommon weight. The Protestant writer Ra\\ in his ' German Society at the close of the Middle Ages,' says (p I (if)) of Dr. Martin Luther 'He was opposed to divorce, thou'gfti he did not forbid it, and recommended that a maw 'should (rather ha\e a plurality of \\i\es than that he 'should put away any of them ' In one of Ins sermons otn the Pentateuch, g<i\en in his Collected Woiks (' Saemmit. Werke,' xxxin , 323-1) he says 'It is not. forbidden. Uiat a man should ha\ c m,ore than one wife I would, not fodib'i'd it to-day, albeit I would not ad\ise it. . . Yet neitbor would I coin.dc rrtm it' In 1,")3W 'he adopted a far more decided attitude than one of mere passive tolerance towards polygamy he permitted Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, to iia\ c two ' wne% ' sunultaneous'ly — Catherine df Saxony (his lawful spouse) and Marguerite de St/rfal. In return fo>i this concession, Philip had piously promised to ' live and die moie cheerfully ins the cause of the Gospel ' (that is, of Luther's "newrfangled creed), ' and be more ready to undertake its defence. 'I engage,' he aduled, 'to perfoim, on myi part, aIJ (bat may be icvcfuiied of me in reason, whether as regards the property of convents, oi matters of aj similar description' The bait took Luther, Bucer, Melanctbon, and fn c other Doctors of Divinity 'drew up, on December 7, l.") 3'), the famous document acceding to Philip's reqluest far a second paitnei of his joys anld woes The permission fora polygamous union was given — ■so said these pious ' Refomieis ' — ' t'hal t'lu 1 t^loty of God may be promoted ' But they cautiously added : 4We are of opinion that it ought to be done secretly , that is to say, there should be none present beyond the contracting parties, and a few trustworthy persons,

who should be bound to secrecy.' The bigamous nuptials were celebrated by Melander, the sycophant and creature of the drunken, roystering, immoral Landgrave of Hesse. Some years ago a Paris newspaper contained this unique advertisement : ' A young man of agreeable presence, and desirous of getting married, would like to make the acquaintance of an -aged and experienced gentleman who could dissuade him from, taking] the* fatal step.' The ' experienced gentleman ' who tiie>l the bigamous slip-knot for Philip of Hesse was about the last man on oarth to dissuade the uxorious Landgrave from his second ' fatal step.' On the contra-ry,' as H]um,pty-Dumipty said in Lookring-glass Land. The accomm ocfrating varlet (as the noted American Protestant scholar and divine, Dr. Starbuck, puts it) ' kept his master in good theart by marrying three wives, without divorcing any.' When the magnitude of this scajjwtal, so unexampled in Christendom, was brought home to them in a way that scared them for their ' cause,' Dr. Martin Bucer and Dr. Martin Luther, andoavorqtil to show it under by what Dr. Starbuek calls a 'campaign of sanctified mendacity.' They planned <ai boM arid 'public 'denial of the whole proceedings. Buoor— pleading that the Apostles and even Christ and Crod tiho Father were dissemblers ?— said (Lonz, L7's-80) : So should we also 'not alone conceal from our enemies the truth wherewith they can hurt us, but also through antagonistic error turn them from it.' Luther .statod his position with even greater frankness, as may be seen by reference to Lenz (372/7) and De Wette-Sedde-mann (vi , 263-4). lie contended that • the private yea may! remain a public nay, ami vice-versa.' And at his conference with Hessian councillors at Eisenach in July, 15,40, he laid it down as a working principle that a good, thuim/ping lie is justifiable when told for %he benefit of the ' Reformed ' religion, i' What would it matter, i isati'd h*\ ' even if one should, for some greater gpod, and for the s a ke of tftie Christian Church, come, out with a good plump lie ' (' eine gute starke Luege ') *> Here is the real origin of an immoral principle that is flay* after day laid to the charge of the Catholic Church— which wholly repudiates and a'blhors it— by well-meaning enthusiasts whose limited acquaintance with! Reformation literature leaves them in blissful ignorance of its real source. * Chambers' ' Book of Days ' (vol. li p. 6fi9) tells how, tit 'a later dale, the Cahimstic clergy of Prussia surpassed Luther and his fellow-Doctors of Divinity by formally authorising Frederic William H. to have qjhite a httle harem of ' three wives at the same time— Eh/aibeth of Brunswick, the Princess of Hesse, and the Countess ot Ku'hloi The authorisation granted by the divines vi as,' ways Chambers, 'like that of Luther and Ins brethren, founded on the principle that it was better to com 11 lact1 act an illegal marriage than to pursue habitually a coair.se of immorality and error.' ■' Strange as the facts appnar,' says the .same, wnter, ' they are perfectly authentic' The untutored savages in the heart of the Dark Continent can therefore plead high ' Reforniod ' authority both for their simultaneous; awl their ' tandem ' polygamy— alias, divorce. Some thirty years ago a naturalist in Bedford (Massachusetts) accidentally leu a few eggs of the gypsy moth get out of his control The creature is- now an expensive and dreaded pest in the Old Bay State, and people would give much to (be nd of it The principles affecting the marriage 4 leltttvat \vere turned loo.se at the Reformation have, in am analogous way, produced the .swarm of domestic and social e\ils that circle around the rhvorcemill. The growth of these calamitous ills is no mere freaik or ' %dak 'of our time It is the natural, foreseen, and inevitable outcome of the tampering with the unity .mid lmd'issolu'bility ot the marriage bond wjth which the Reformat'ian both m Germany and in England was ushered in. The Catholic Church still remains what! she has ever been, the real bulwark of domestic life, the fearless defender of woman's best and most sacred rights. , „ ■,