Pope Leo XIV: One Spouse Is Enough. 21% of Americans: Uh …

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a (mainly) American holiday in which families crowd around the table and offer gratitude to the Lord for all their abundant blessings. Some tables are more crowded than others in the US, at least according to data crunched by CNN’s Harry Enten. 

Let’s back up to the news that prompted Tuesday night’s discussion between Enten and CNN host Erin Burnett. Pope Leo XIV approved and published a new doctrinal commentary titled One Flesh: In Praise of Monogamy (available in Italian only at the moment) earlier that day, primarily intended to support bishops in Africa. Long overdue, the new Holy Father delivered a message that made clear the myriad reasons that monogamous marriage protects families and societies, with a special emphasis on the dignity of women:

“Polygamy is in opposition with moral law. It radically contradicts conjugal communion,” the document states in Italian.

Questions surrounding polygamy in Africa were being addressed by one of 10 study groups created after bishops and laypeople gathered at the Vatican in October 2024 for the Synod on Synodality. In their interim reports, the study group on polygamy said it had submitted its findings to the Vatican’s doctrinal department and that it would soon issue a final report offering suggestions and reflections on the matter.

A theme woven throughout the document is that monogamy protects the equality and dignity of women.

“There is no place for some form of polyandry, no polygamy,” the document states, citing St. Thomas Aquinas, who likened having many wives to “a form of slavery.”

At least as far back as 2014 at the Synod on the Family, these bishops had pressed the Vatican to issue strong statements in support of Catholic teachings on the family, as I wrote while covering it from Rome. Pressure from both animists and Muslims engaging in polygamy threatened their evangelization in the region, but Western practices that embraced polygamy and polyamory made it even more difficult. It took ten years to address the urgent concerns of the African bishops, but at least the Vatican has now clearly and unambiguously defended traditional teachings on the family in response to those concerns. 

As Religion News Service notes, though, the target audience also includes Europe and the Americas:

The new doctrinal document is also the first time the Vatican has addressed “different public forms of non-monogamous unions — sometimes called ‘polyamory’ — that are growing in the West,” alongside issues such as infidelity and sexualization on social media. About one third of Americans say that open marriages are “somewhat or completely acceptable,” according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study, with the percentage as high as 50% among Americans under 30.

And this is where we get to those holiday tables that may be, er … unusually crowded today. Harry Enten works from Gallup data rather than Pew, which is also more recent but comes to roughly the same conclusion. One in five Americans see polygamy and polyamory as “morally acceptable,” a finding that appears to shock Burnett (via Mediaite):

“We do know the percentage who say its morally acceptable is up like a rocket.”

CNN’s Harry Enten tells us something we don’t know after Pope Leo XIV signed off on a Vatican statement warning against polygamy and polyamory. pic.twitter.com/RGOUg10X4Y

— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) November 26, 2025

“Up like a rocket” may be overstating it just a bit, but the increase is certainly notable in the Gallup data from July. Also notable: 74% of Americans see polygamy as morally unacceptable. That’s significantly higher than pornography (60%), sex changes (54%), and teen sex (51%), but lower than infidelity between married partners (89%). 

Presumably, the narrow difference between the morally-wrong numbers between infidelity and polygamy is the supposed transparency and honesty in the latter. But even that is suspect, as practiced in the West either explicitly or in the form of “ethical non-monogamy”/polyamory. Partners can be manipulated into those practices or manipulated by those practices under pressure, which is why Pope Leo XIV correctly argues that these systems erode the dignity of people within them – especially women, who risk more and arguably benefit less from them. 

We should be thankful that these practices are still overwhelmingly seen as morally wrong. However, unless we follow Pope Leo’s lead and explain why, we will see more young people shrug off those concerns as part of an old order that only exists to curb their impulses. They will miss the value of those curbs, both to others and to themselves. We need to boldly make the moral argument before it gets lost forever, and before its absence does more damage than it already has. 

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