Normalizing suicide

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Unfortunately, lack of reverence for life only ever ends badly.
 
Thorolfr said:
But I can see someone with Alzheimer’s making that decision for themselves when they are still competent to do so.
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But the problem is, once you allow it for the “competent”, there is NO WAY to keep it spreading to people who don’t want it.

There are plenty of examples upthread to to back up this point.
 
Don’t call yourself a Catholic if you don’t believe this. He should have been denied access to the Sacraments, and perhaps that would have dissuaded him. Instead, he was scandalized by Catholics misrepresenting our Faith.
 
Sounds like you were taught by Calvinists. That only shows the perversity of Calvinism.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
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Thorolfr:
But I can see someone with Alzheimer’s making that decision for themselves when they are still competent to do so.
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But the problem is, once you allow it for the “competent”, there is NO WAY to keep it spreading to people who don’t want it.

There are plenty of examples upthread to to back up this point.
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Of course, someone can commit suicide without assistance if they really want to. They do it all the time. That’s what Robin Williams did. His autopsy showed that he had “diffuse Lewy body dementia” which his wife described as “the terrorist inside my husband’s brain.” He hung himself. Who would want to live with a “terrorist” inside their brain?
 
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The children blessed him back in May when he went to church for the last time.

It doesn’t seem like they went to the hospital that day.
 
So do Catholics think that there is anything wrong with offering comfort and friendship to someone who intends kill themselves? I don’t mean supporting their planned action of pretending to agree with it, but just being nice person? having pointed out your religious objection why not attend a gathering of friends? Not unlike, I magine, what a priest in support of the Church’s teaching on the death penalty does when accompanying a Catholic to their execution.
 
Thorolfr said:
Of course, someone can commit suicide without assistance if they really want to.
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Of course they do.
People also commit murder and theft and rape and perjury.
But we don’t legalize something just because “people will do it anyway”.
 
FiveLinden said:
but just being nice person?
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What does “nice” even mean?
“Do as I say and show up to witness this even as I’m about do do something you find deeply despicable? Or else I’ll make sure you are shunned and hated?”

ETA

See, this is where the claim of “I just want to do what I want, but I would never force you” quickly shows its cracks.
 
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It’s part of the solution albeit a small part.

The bigger part is to focus our abilities and ingenuity on preventing suffering or alleviating suffering while respecting the dignity of human life.

If there’s a will there’s a way.
 
Try reading some info from disability rights groups. They do not want assisted suicide laws to be passed - - they fear for their very lives. Because someone may say, “well, their quality of life is not very good, so it would be better to just end it”.
Here is the website of such a group, called “Not Dead Yet”. They are adamantly against assisted suicide / PAS / euthanasia in any form.

 
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Here’s a quote:
In a March 16 Facebook post, Fuller claimed that he had completed the legal steps required to receive a prescription of life-ending drugs, and that he had the approval of a priest to end his own life.

“I have absolutely no reservations about what I am doing,” he wrote. “And my pastor/sponsor has given me his blessings. And he’s a Jesuit!!!”
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He must not have known today's Jesuits very well, if he thought that was surprising in any way.
 
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FiveLinden said:
So do Catholics think that there is anything wrong with offering comfort and friendship to someone who intends kill themselves? I don’t mean supporting their planned action of pretending to agree with it, but just being nice person? having pointed out your religious objection why not attend a gathering of friends? Not unlike, I magine, what a priest in support of the Church’s teaching on the death penalty does when accompanying a Catholic to their execution.
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An execution is different than a planned suicide. I could see a Catholic going for a visit sometime, and saying “You know I don’t agree with this, but I wish you well, and I hope you change your mind”. That would be a LOT different than going to a “party” right before the suicide. In fact I don’t see how anyone could go to such a “party” without feeling deeply disturbed and ill the whole time. But that’s just me.
 
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Thinker_Doer said:
By making sure - as much as we can - that they can make their own decisions.
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This is precisely the problem.

I live in a country, Switzerland, which has legalized assisted suicide.

I also happen to know a number of medical professionals and chaplains who work in palliative care.

Their unanimous witness is that people who enter palliative care with an urgent, imperative demand for assisted suicide change their minds after one day or two. Because they’re not in pain any longer. Because they thought they would die a horrible and undignified death, and palliative care restores their dignity, showers them with care, beauty, attention, and because they find meaning again in living their last weeks to the full (or to the fullest they can).

Pain and fear of (often imagined and anticipated) evils have a way to twist perspective and disconnect people from reality, and prevent them from making a real choice.
 
One of my friends, who I knew through a large social friends group of about 50 people now mostly in their mid-30s to mid-50s (we’ve all known each other in person for about 10 years or more at this point) , committed suicide a few years ago, and there have been other people known to the group who committed suicide (usually as the result of severe depression or struggles with a disease like addiction) as well as people who died of cancer or other terminal diseases. So we’ve had a number of discussions among the group about suicide and what can/ should be done.

The vast majority of this group are either agnostic/ atheist, or “spiritual but not religious”, and very few (maybe 2 or 3) are Catholics, and of those I think I’m the only one who practices. I can tell you right now that aversion to suicide is NOT a specifically “Catholic” thing or even a “religious” thing, that most of the people in this group do not support suicide and are gutted when it occurs, that they believe we should do everything possible to prevent it and some of them even think suicide is an inherently selfish act that inflicts pain on people who love the person.

If it were a case of a loved one in terrible pain from some disease (which some of these folks have been through in their own lives already), most of them would support putting the person in a hospice and loading them up with painkillers and anything palliative, and turning off machine life support or anything costly/ extraordinary, but they likely wouldn’t support calling up Dr. Kevorkian or the equivalent. And they wouldn’t want to attend somebody’s suicide party.

Like I said this doesn’t have any sort of religious basis for most of these people. I suspect that some of them don’t believe in life after death so that when the loved one is dead, they are gone, and there’s an impulse to try to keep that loved person with you as long as you reasonably can. Also, a lot of these people have suffered from depression and have mixed to negative feelings about encouraging depressed people, who are no doubt in great pain, to die rather than trying to get them help.
 
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Thinker_Doer said:
If it does not force you to participate, don’t chastise them.
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This is the same logic that will be used to justify legalizing prostitution, pedophilia, necrophilia, and other forms of perversion in the next century.
 
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