I think I found what I needed, but I’ll share because it’s so eye opening.
“Women in the Paraguayan War[edit]
Paraguayan women had a significant role in the Paraguayan War.
During the period just before the war began many Paraguayan women were the heads of their households, meaning they did have some power and authority. They received such positions by being widows, having children out of wedlock, or their husbands worked on peons. When the war began women started to venture out of the home becoming nurses, working with government, and stabilizing themselves into the public sphere. When the New York Times reported on the war in 1868 they considered Paraguayan women equal to their male counterparts.[114]
Paraguayan women’s support of the war effort can be divided into two stages. The first being from the time the war began in 1864 to the Paraguayan evacuation of Asunción in 1868. During the period of the war, peasant women became the number one producers of agricultural goods. The second stage begins when the war turned to a more guerrilla form. It started when the capital of Paraguay fell and ended with the assassination of Paraguay’s president Francisco Solano López. At this stage the number of women becoming victims of war was increasing.
Women helped sustain Paraguayan society during a very unstable period. Though Paraguay did lose the war, the outcome may have been more disastrous without women performing specific tasks. They were farmers, soldiers, nurses, and government officials. They became the symbol for national unification, and at the end of the war, the traditions women maintained is part of what held the nation together.[115] ” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War)
“This is something I knew nothing about until a couple of weeks ago.
Following the incredibly destructive Paraguayan war in the mid-1800s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War
so many men had been killed, and so few remained, that there was apparently a temporary but official Roman Catholic dispensation allowing ‘polygamy’ in the sense of plural marriage – in order to enable repopulation. ”
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=339504
Also, this from the above thread.
“Actually, St. Thomas in his Summa Contra Gentiles, explains the three ends of marriage:
1. The procreation and rearing of children.
2. Common good of spouses.
3. The sacramental sign between man and woman.
While theoretically not impossible, the ability for a man to be able to be true to the vows of the Sacrament is impeded my multiple wives, so St. Thomas says this is why the Catholic Church does not permit the practice. The sancitity of the marital union cannot be assured by polygamy in the same way monogamy can. Polygamy is not in itself evil, or condemned, but is not the ideal we are called to. The ideal is the union of two people in one flesh as Scripture says. It was thus in the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, and it is to thus we are called.
The only type of polygamy strictly condemned is polyandry (one woman, many husbands). While less relevant with paternal testing now, St.Thomas tells us all children have the right to know their father, which in this relationship arrangement would have at the time been impossible. Even now, though, just as the body has only one head, so too can the home have only one head, and therefore only one husband.
There is only one notable example of the Church permitting sacramental polygamy, and that was in Paraguay in the 19th century. The War of the Triple Alliance decimated the male population, already low, and so the Church gave a dispensation for polygamy in order to rebuild the populace, and of course later ended it when this was achieved.
Sorry if this answer is not very coherant, but I try!”
So, I guess my request for help has instead turned into a question:
Why would women practice “serial monogomy” at best? Wouldn’t it be better for many of them to share one very wealthy man to get the utility they pander for?
Franky 3 years, 11 months ago.
