Is suicide ever acceptable?

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freethinker83

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I was just watching the George W. Bush 9/11 documentary on National Geographic. He mentioned the victims who were trapped near the top of the towers and jumped to their deaths instead of waiting to die in smoke and fire, or ultimately the collapse of the buildings. Imagining the horrors these people faced, I may have done the same thing.

I know that the Catholic view is decidedly anti-suicide. I was wondering if you think it is justifiable in a situation such as 9/11 where the person is certain they will die anyway.

On a side note, watching that special brought that day back to me and I was flooded with the emotions I initially felt. What a terrible day in human history.
 
I voted yes.

You are a member of the Norwegian underground in WWII. You know the names of some other underground members. The Gestapo is torturing you and demanding those names. You know you are close to the breaking point and that breaking will mean the deaths of other underground members. You are on the top floor of a multi-story building. You break free for a moment, jump out a window, and take your own life, to avoid giving up the others’ names.

IMHO, that is not a blameworthy act. Heck, I think it’s heroic.

(And this exact scenario happened…the deceased had helped the British use midget submarines to attack the battleship Tirpitz in Norway in 1943, if memory serves).
 
I suicide ever acceptable??

No.

Catechism:

Suicide

2280 Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him.
It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life.
We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls.
We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us.
It is not ours to dispose of.

2281 Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life.
It is gravely contrary to the just love of self.
It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations.
Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.

2282 If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal.
Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law.
Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.

2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. the Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.
 
VonDerTann said:
I voted yes.

You are a member of the Norwegian underground in WWII. You know the names of some other underground members. The Gestapo is torturing you and demanding those names. You know you are close to the breaking point and that breaking will mean the deaths of other underground members. You are on the top floor of a multi-story building. You break free for a moment, jump out a window, and take your own life, to avoid giving up the others’ names.

IMHO, that is not a blameworthy act. Heck, I think it’s heroic.

(And this exact scenario happened…the deceased had helped the British use midget submarines to attack the battleship Tirpitz in Norway in 1943, if memory serves).
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That’s not quite the same thing. You have a double effect argument there: Death is a forseen, but not directly willed, consequence of the only thing you can think to do to prevent them from making you talk.

If, on the other hand, you simply decided you’d rather go splat than be tortured any more (or in the 9/11 case, be burned, suffocated, or crushed), that’s a different story entirely. That’s merely an act of pride, cowardice, and/or despair.

If I had to guess, I’d say that being in the towers on 9/11 caused the jumpers to be in such a panic that they might not be fully culpable for their actions, as the Catechism excerpts above (Thanks, Bookcat!) imply. But that doesn’t mean the actions were actually licit.
 
Were the jumpers jumping in a small hope to save their lives? I would say yes. To remain in the building was certain death. To jump offered a very small chance at life.
 
freethinker83 said:
I was just watching the George W. Bush 9/11 documentary on National Geographic. He mentioned the victims who were trapped near the top of the towers and jumped to their deaths instead of waiting to die in smoke and fire, or ultimately the collapse of the buildings. Imagining the horrors these people faced, I may have done the same thing.

I know that the Catholic view is decidedly anti-suicide. I was wondering if you think it is justifiable in a situation such as 9/11 where the person is certain they will die anyway.

On a side note, watching that special brought that day back to me and I was flooded with the emotions I initially felt. What a terrible day in human history.
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But wait…how do you know they were jumping to their deaths as opposed to running from scorching flames and lung-scorching smoke and fumes? When faced with fire and smoke, it’s only natural to run from it, even if it’s out a window. There was nowhere for them to go, and nowhere to find relief. They sure did face horror: painful scorching, stiflying fire and smoke and fumes on one side, and a certain death from the fall on the other side. I don’t think that’s suicide.
 
Catholic90 said:
Were the jumpers jumping in a small hope to save their lives? I would say yes. To remain in the building was certain death. To jump offered a very small chance at life.
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+1. And as Bookcat has posted, suicide is definitely not acceptable. We can’t assume those who have done it are damned, but it is still not acceptable.
 
What if you jumped from the burning building because you’d rather die from falling than from being burned alive? Would God really punish someone for doing that??
 
Debora123 said:
What if you jumped from the burning building because you’d rather die from falling than from being burned alive? Would God really punish someone for doing that??
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We can’t know. But I don’t think that is suicide in that case anyway. Those people didn’t have a choice.

I think that is where this fits in quite well:
2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. the Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.
Click to expand...
 
Debora123 said:
What if you jumped from the burning building because you’d rather die from falling than from being burned alive? Would God really punish someone for doing that??
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I doubt it. Do you think they had time to go through that mental process? I don’t think they did. Most “normal” people don’t want to die. We’re not talking about people who are trying to take the easy way out of life or suffering. We’re talking about people affected by a sudden and tremendous disaster. And ending pain isn’t the same as wanting to end one’s life. The bombing of the twin towers was complete chaos. Chaos makes people run around crazy not knowing what to do with themselves. I can see people trying to take elevators down shafts. I can see people stampeding to stairs. And I can see people jumping out windows when faced with a wall of fire and smoke. And even if they did say, “my eyeballs are burning out of my head, I think I’ll just jump”, do you think they’re in the right frame of mind to be culpable for ‘suicide’? I really just don’t think so.

I don’t know if any of you all have been in a minor disaster or near-disaster. But just from windows blowing into a grocery store during a storm made people run amok without any direction. It was fast, unexpected, loud and disruptive. I can only imagine the craziness in the twin towers, as well as outside the buildings.
 
I vote no. I must believe that God, as the Creator of life, finds suicide totally unacceptable. In my weakness, I also know that I must continually convince myself of this belief or I’ll be tempted to commit suicide if ever faced with a 9/11 type situation.
 
Catholic90 said:
Were the jumpers jumping in a small hope to save their lives? I would say yes. To remain in the building was certain death. To jump offered a very small chance at life.
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Um, just how is there a slight chance of surviving when jumping off the 70th floor of a 100 storey building? I don’t think anyone has survived a fall from this high.

This is an interesting thread, because it’s another reminder that things are not always black and white and that the context is everything in determining if it’s right or wrong.
 
People have survived from falling thousands of feet when their parachutes did not open. I think it was certainly possible to survive.

Do a google search.
 
wjp984 said:
People have survived from falling thousands of feet when their parachutes did not open. I think it was certainly possible to survive…
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Stranger things than that have happened…

Let’s simply “let go and let God” while we pray for their souls and even more for their surviving families, who are facing the anniversary of this Satanic attack on innocents…
 
Greetings to the OP, those posting in this thread and or reading this thread,

No suicide is never acceptable.

I would have posted the quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but Bookcat is already on top of that.

God bless.
Anathama Sit

**
 
Debora123 said:
What if you jumped from the burning building because you’d rather die from falling than from being burned alive? Would God really punish someone for doing that??
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I was addressing the question of “Is suicide ever acceptable” to which the answer is no.

The case of those who died on that horrible day seeking to escape the fire …would bring bring the question of was such suicide? I recall discussion of such at the time vaguely…but it is too vague to a memory (the discussion…not the terrible event) for me to recall what was proposed. Though I vaguely recall that notion that one was in a panic and seeking a way out… and seeking to escape the fire etc.( not a suicide jumper --ie jumping from a bridge). I imagine if someone searches the main CA site they will come up with an article regarding that terrible day (or Jimmy Akins blog)…(I cannot at the moment).

May the souls off all who died that day rest in peace. And may their families be comforted and not forgotten.
 
Bookcat said:
I was addressing the question of “Is suicide ever acceptable” to which the answer is no.

The case of those who died on that horrible day seeking to escape the fire …would bring bring the question of was such suicide? I recall discussion of such at the time vaguely…but it is too vague to a memory (the discussion…not the terrible event) for me to recall what was proposed. Though I vaguely recall that notion that one was in a panic and seeking a way out… and seeking to escape the fire etc.( not a suicide jumper --ie jumping from a bridge). I imagine if someone searches the main CA site they will come up with an article regarding that terrible day (or Jimmy Akins blog)…(I cannot at the moment).

May the souls off all who died that day rest in peace. And may their families be comforted and not forgotten.
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I agree. Suicide is always wrong, but we can’t always tell if it’s suicide. Jumping from a burning building could be the result of an irrational panic, muddled thinking due to oxygen deprivation and smoke inhalation, the honest belief that there was hope of surviving the jump, etc. none of which can be considered sins. We may wonder, but only God will judge. In the meantime, I will pray for all the victims, regardless of the specifics of their deaths.
 
To be clear, I didn’t mean for the question to be about 9/11 specifically, I just used it as a specific example of what I meant with my question.
 
Some things that look like suicide may not be from a moral standpoint. Harakiri, for instance, was frequently more like a self-inflicted execution—if you read about bushido, you find that the rationale was that the person had done something that warranted death, but it would be, basically, impolite to ask someone else to take on the responsibility (and the blood-pollution, in Shinto, and karma, in Buddhism), so they killed themselves. Also, especially later (in the Edo period), a samurai would ask a friend to behead him after he’d cut his belly. And that wasn’t simply to end his suffering and keep his dignity—it was so neither of them had to take on the full guilt of killing him, since “was he killed by cutting his belly or by losing his head?” is a variation on a classic paradox in Indian thought. It’s a bit like how one guy in a firing squad has a blank, so none of them knows his bullet killed the condemned man.

I don’t say harakiri was a good practice, but I don’t think it represents the same action as suicide.
 
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