I don’t think the differentiation works like that. Clearly in this example the Catholic is going to die anyway.
How is this clear? He may die he may not. People have survived plane crashes, parachute failures etc. That’s up to God, not us forcing the issue.
As people have quoted above, “There can be no greater love than to lay down your life for another.” To lay ones life down, it has to be given freely, not be taken by force.
To lay down one’s life is to accept the inevitability of death, not to actually cause it.
You say jumping is the same as throwing someone else…not at all.
Throwing another out the baloon is far different than jumping yourself. If one jumps they are, “laying down your life”. The sacrifice is choosen and offered. This hero is a savior, not of souls but of lives. To toss someone out, is to forceably take another’s life and thus us murder.
To jump is to forceably take your life, and thus suicide.
As you say, there are subtle differences, but I don’t at all agree on your understanding of them.
“Laying down ones life” is “taking one’s own life”. It is a choice, followed by an action, that says I’m doing something that will result in me being dead and these others being alive. Let’s do it.
If “laying down ones life” means less, if it mean “accepting death when it comes and forces us to die” there is no choice/action, we’re just pretending there is. It’s someone saying, “okay I’m toast, I’m going to die…but I choose this death” - then doing nothing different than if they hadn’t had a thought at all, and dying.
