What about polygamy?

Commonweal's recent attempt to address homosexuality and Catholicism suffers from a kind of provincialism. Luke Timothy Johnson writes as if the whole of Catholicism were limited to the Europeanized north. But to Christians of Asia and Africa, the assertion that a family with two mothers and no father or two fathers and no mother is superior to a family with two mothers and one father can appear arrogant and hypocritical. The prohibitions against both polygamy and homosexuality have their roots in longstanding Christian practice. A truly universal church must provide some rationale if it is now to abolish the prohibition of homosexual activity while continuing to forbid the practice of polygamy.

JUDY TEFFT

Loveland, Colo.

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