Regarding MERCY. Orthodox Judaism Vs Catholicism Vs Fundamentalist View on Suicide

[MeusVita]

I just returned from a funeral for a suicide and I am very upset. I’ll get to her suicide note in regard to Catholicim in a moment.

I was raised Catholic. My mother was a devout Catholic born in Italy, my father Jewish. My father passed when I was young and I was educated in Cathollic schools and college. My family is huge, my mother being one of 11 and my father being one of eight. That latter point will figure as I continue.

The funeral was for a cousin. She was raised Lutheran. Her death, suicide. Many family members did not attend and were vocal that they would not because of the manner of death…and that was stated by both the Catholics and Jewish members of my family. As far as I could see, all the non-Catholic Christians did attend.

After the funeral Mass (yes, it was allowed) we all gathered at my Aunt’s home and the next day, things exploded. It was an awful debate of dozens and dozens of family members. It started out respectful and in the spirit of consolation, but grew out of control.

Before I go further, I am WELL aware of the teaching of the Catechism on suicide.(2280 thru 2283). And, I also know the Judaic view, the Rashi on Genesis 9:5. The non-Catholic Christian view was pretty clear…once saved always saved, regardless of suicide.

So, I have these viewpoints.

1. Catholic. It is a grave sin with some mitigating factors (severe anquish, mental illness, etc), but God may choose to forgive the person and offer salutary repentence and save them from eternal damnation. Or, they go straight to hell.
2. Judaism. There is no “hell” but God will punish the soul in Gehinom (which is comparable to our Purgatory).
3. The “Born Agains.” If they were “saved” then they are in heaven. Period. (I under no circumstance subscribe to this view).

This post-funeral debate has made me question my Catholic beliefs BIG TIME.

Is God merciful or not? I have read Saint Faustina’s Diary and that is the picture I have held in my mind’s eye of God’s fount of mercy. A God of comfort with arms open. In life AND IN DEATH.

I am old enough to remember the “If someone takes their life they go straight to hell” platitude, so I don’t think it’s an added comfort that the Catechism has slipped in the salutary repentence loophole.

The suicide note. In part, in read:

“God has said to trust in Him and bring my troubles to Him. I have done this but the burden is too much. If God is truly merciful, He will accept me. If he is not merciful, then I would not want to spend eternity with a God who is not.”

Remember, she is Lutheran, but this does not sound like she believed “once saved always saved.”

I am ready to return to reconsider Judaism over this. On the principle of MERCY. As it stands, God IS merciful, so very compassionate UNTIL His creation is weak and cannot endure life. Then, He is justice.

 

[ChristIsTheWay]

I am sorry to hear of your cousin’s unfortunate death. It is traditional belief that those who commit suicide are damned. However, I do not think it is Sacred Tradition from the Apostles. Nor is it directly mentioned in the Bible, only “thou shall not kill.” The Church now recognizes that those who commit the sin of suicide are usually not in their right mind and therefore have not committed a mortal sin for which they will be sent to Hell for. No one can know for sure, but we can rest assured of God’s mercy and His love, including cases of suicide.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=89418&highlight=suicide

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=57566&highlight=suicide

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=44005&highlight=suicide

 

[LilyM]

Of course God is merciful, just as he is forgiving. That’s why the Church never has and never will have the authority to declare any person to definitely be in hell. We simply can’t place those sort of limits on God’s forgiveness and mercy.

We can say *in general *that certain things such as suicide are grave sins. We can say in general again that if done knowingly and with full consent and without repentance or other mitigating circumstances they are enough to result in hell.

We can’t say more than that, and anyone who pretends to is misguided and overly simplistic, and flat out wrong. Suicide especially is a situation where one or more of the necessary elements of mortal sin are most likely to be absent and one or more of the mitigating factors are most likely to be present.

However, it sometimes happens that people fail to ask for or acknowledge their need for such things as mercy and forgiveness, even from God. And sometimes you do need to at least make enough effort to ask for things before you will receive them.

I don’t pretend that I’ve been in your situation or can understand your feelings, but I hope that you don’t ever doubt God’s mercy. You can doubt people’s understanding of it, or doubt their understanding of the nature of suicide, because we do have a faulty understanding of some things, but don’t doubt that He IS merciful.

 

[kellie]

I am so sorry for your loss.

No one who has never experienced the anguish of a mental illness knows the trauma of it.

I constantly talk to God about it. I have major depression.

Some days I get angry at God, and I tell Him too.

But most of the time I know He has given me this cross to bear, and I just say to Him, “I guess you knew what you were doing when you created me, so I place all my trust in you”.

To get to the point of suicide must of meant your cousin was so ill, imagine being at that point, I have felt it sometimes, but never succumbed.

I am sure your cousin, as with most suicide victims, didn’t commit a mortal sin, as they aren’t of sound mind at the time.

I fully trust God knows our thoughts that run through our heads 24/7, and He knows why we suicide.

I am sure He places us in purgatory, to cleanse us, to give us a scolding so to speak, just as any parent does when their child misbehaves.

But I am positive He eventually lets the person into eternal glory.

They did the best they could do with their illness.

That is just my opinion.

God bless you and your family through all this.

 

[Valke2]

I am sorry for your loss. As I am sure you know, Judaism generally prohbits one from harming their own body. If you do some reseach on the Jewish law on this, it will look very harsh, at times equating suicide with murder. But, the reality is that the Jewish faith almost always treats suicide as a normal death, since it is assumed the person was not in a normal state of mind.

So, on the books, Judaism does everything it can to clearly make it understood that suicide is a grave sin (the alternative would be to acknolwedge the validity of it, which would present its own host of problems). In reality, the suicide is treated as a normal death. I like to think of it as trying our best to prevent someone from making a terrible mistake but not penalizing them (or their loved ones) once the mistake is made.

I’m sorry for you loss but I’m glad you raised the issue. Too often when it comes to religious beliefs, people behave in a way that they think they are supposed to behave and not the way their religion actually dictates they should behave.

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

I’ll backup what Valke2 said & add the following:

We (orthodox Jews) infer the ban on suicide from Genesis 9:5 (“And surely your blood of your lives will I require…”). The Jewish attitude towards suicide, as opposed to selfless martyrdom, is rather complicated. On the one hand, while voluntary and premeditated suicide is considered to be reprehensible and an affront to God, all suicides are a priori assumed to have done so without the necessary premeditation, whether from pathological depression, not being in possession of his faculties, or from having been under duress, etc. until it can be proven otherwise. rthodox rabbinical courts will usually bend over backwards to avoid ruling that a given suicide was willful, voluntary, premeditated, etc.

“Duress” here mainly means the necessity of having to kill one’s self (or consent to your being killed) rather than violate one of the three sins that a Jew must never commit even at the cost of his/her life (murder, adultery/incest, and idolatry), or to prevent being captured alive by non-Jews if this would involve a desecration of God’s Name and would, in itself, be a sanctification of God’s Name. The suicide of King Saul is a good example of the latter (our Sages do not condemn King Saul, “because he knew that the Philistines would do with him as they pleased, and put him to death”); the suicide of Samson is another. The mass suicides which took place during the Middle Ages in order to avoid forced baptism, or the March 1190 mass suicide by the Jews of York, England, are generally deemed to be martyrs who died in the sanctification of God’s Name.

Jews who (God forbid!) commit voluntary, willful and premeditated suicide (and who are ruled as such by an orthodox rabbinical court; see above) are not to be mourned for; i.e. surviving first-degree relatives do not observe the usual Jewish mourning rites & practices. There is a custom that the kaddish prayer be said for 12 months (it’s usually said for 11 months only) for a willful suicide, the assumption being that his/her soul needs the extra month of having kaddish recited for it for an additional month.

These (askmoses.com/article.html?h=574&o=816225 & askmoses.com/article.html?h=165&o=1311) may be useful.

Be well & may God comfort both you & the deceased!

ssv

 

[MeusVita]

Thank you all for the condolences. I do appreciate the sentiment.

After reading all your posts, I am concerned with my belief about God’s mercy.

If a place of eternal punishment does exist, then that infers that God does choose justice over Mercy in many cases. Given this truth, I do not understand how the church can attest to God’s perpetual Mercy.

Serious question here:

We are Judeo-Christian, which I often must remind myself. Judeo. Jews do not believe in a place of eternal punishment. As a Jew, Christ himself would not have grown up in a belief system that included an everlasting damnation. So then, when did the Jewish belief system in regard to Mercy and punishment in perpetuity transform itself into the Christian hell? Did hell exist only after Christ? Did he institute it (for mankind) only after his crucifixion? And if not, if it always existed for mankind, then how did the Jews have it so wrong when they were taught by God himself?

God’s character cannot change. His character was the same before Christ as it was after Christ, so how could he change from allowing all to be cleansed and enter heaven to disallowing some to be cleansed and entering hell. His mercy was modified? His character, modified?

This is really not about heaven and hell to me, though it may seem that is my sticking point. It truly is God’s Mercy and the consolation that he loves all of us, enough so that he would not damn his children to an irrevocable state of damnation.

My cousin appears to have planned her demise. We have discovered that she had been planning it for a minimum of 2 months, as the purchase of the firearm which she used was done so weeks ago. She was on antidepressants, but appeared to function well, in that she went to work, socialized, etc. Her pastor (Lutheran) said that she had come to him several times in the past year to speak to him privately, though he did not offer any specifics. Dear God.

 

[Zooey]

First of all, you have my greatest sympathy. I cannot begin to imagine the pain that this must have caused for you, & for your family.
I think that we must always remember that God is loving & merciful. He knows what was in your cousin’s heart. We can trust His merciful love for her.
I would like to suggest that you may want to pray for her, & have prayers for her. My own experience with suicide was less traumatic–my attorney shot himself when he learned that he had cancer. But I found that the one thing that helped me the most, was having his name remembered in prayers for the dead. I was able to feel peace at last. (He had been a friend, as well as attorney).It was a gift that I could give, the last thing I could do for someone who had done so much for me (often without remuneration).

The one point I want to address is that your cousin had been planning for suicide. You must realize that the preparations she made were most likely made in a state where she was not responsible for her actions. Especially since she was on meds for depression, she quite likely did not realize what she was doing…Also, remember that any mood-altering drug has the potential for causing mood swings that can be as apt to cause more depression as not. (As can stopping them suddenly).
In other words, I believe that you have every reason to hope that your cousin was acting in such a disturbed state of mind that she was not responsible for her actions.

Again, this is a terrible tragedy. I hope that your response can be to draw closer to God in prayer for your cousin & your whole family, as you all try to cope with this sad event in your lives.You have my prayers.
God bless.