Remorse for those who commit suicide?

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RHannosh619

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Hi,

I have a question, is it wrong for me to not show much remorse for those people who choose to take there own lives?

For example, in the Rutgers case, I just don’t really care much for it because the guy willingly killed himself. Sure the circumstances were bad, but that does not mean that he should have just killed himself.

From a catholic standpoint, is this wrong?

Best Regards,
Ronnie
 
RHannosh619 said:
Hi,

I have a question, is it wrong for me to not show much remorse for those people who choose to take there own lives?

For example, in the Rutgers case, I just don’t really care much for it because the guy willingly killed himself. Sure the circumstances were bad, but that does not mean that he should have just killed himself.

From a catholic standpoint, is this wrong?

Best Regards,
Ronnie
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I think there are two appropriate responses.
  1. Not concern yourself specifically, as this man’s life was so removed from yours; or
  2. Pray for the repose of his soul, if you are compelled to think about him.
We’re not called to judge this young man, only his actions. We don’t and can’t know his mind, only God can.
 
Right, I don’t “judge” him or think he is going to go to hell because I really don’t know/nor care, but I don’t feel any remorse.

I don’t know if its a bad thing or not, I just honestly believe that people do it to themselves, nobody forced them to do it, and I can’t find any “mercy” in my heart for people like that.

Idk if this is something I should be worried about, or if others feel this way too regarding issues like these.

It’s to the point that people who are actually saddened by such things annoy me…

I just try to get into the mind frame of someone who knows what they are about to do, and honestly want to think, “What am I doing? and why?”… Maybe I’m just blessed to never have to go through that but i don’t know…
 
RHannosh619 said:
Right, I don’t “judge” him or think he is going to go to hell because I really don’t know/nor care, but I don’t feel any remorse.

I don’t know if its a bad thing or not, I just honestly believe that people do it to themselves, nobody forced them to do it, and I can’t find any “mercy” in my heart for people like that.

Idk if this is something I should be worried about, or if others feel this way too regarding issues like these.

It’s to the point that people who are actually saddened by such things annoy me…

I just try to get into the mind frame of someone who knows what they are about to do, and honestly want to think, “What am I doing? and why?”… Maybe I’m just blessed to never have to go through that but i don’t know…
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Well, look at it this way. If a man had a son who committed suicide, would it not be wrong to care about what was going to happen to his son? Would it be right if the father said “he did it to himself, why should I care?” It wouldn’t be right if someone’s loved one felt no remorse because the person committed suicide.
 
Last year, someone I knew took her own life. She was 20. Even though I wasn’t especially close with her, I knew she had problems and found myself deeply affected and saddened by her death.
I’ve had my own share of troubles, but I just can’t comprehend the utter despair she must have felt in those last days of her life. I still find myself wishing that she could have realised how much there is to live for.
There is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding mental illness and suicide. In the end, God is the final judge. We just need to remember to treat each person as Christ would. Maybe if more people had sought to understand or connect with this girl I knew, she would still be alive.
 
RHannosh619 said:
Hi,

I have a question, is it wrong for me to not show much remorse for those people who choose to take there own lives?

For example, in the Rutgers case, I just don’t really care much for it because the guy willingly killed himself. Sure the circumstances were bad, but that does not mean that he should have just killed himself.

From a catholic standpoint, is this wrong?

Best Regards,
Ronnie
Click to expand...
How can you not have remorse? Anyone who takes their own life must have been badly emotionally damaged and/or not in the right frame of mind.

My dad had schizophrenia and manic depression, he killed himself when I was 3 years old. I know he had reason to do so, I can’t be angry at him. My mother however expresses a great amount of anger at him. Perhaps that’s because she was left with 4 kids afterwards, and in that case I can understand. But surely, anyone who does this to themselves cannot really be well in the head. Remorse is all we can have.

On a side note, didn’t Hitler commit suicide? What should we think of that?
 
“The death of any man diminshes me.” --John Donne.

Everyone’s death should diminish us a bit:
  1. Any good person’s death is sad.
  2. Any suicide is generally caused by extreme distress. Most suicides should compel us to feel at least a bit bad for the person – who is, anecdotally, usually horribly lonely, depressed, scared and/or powerless.
  3. A bad person’s death is sad, in that they died unrepentant.
  4. A bad person’s deliberate suicide – i.e. Hitler’s – is bad because it cheats his victims of justice, and/or is a coward’s way out, and because of #3.
 
If we can never know the hearts and thoughts of these individuals then how can we not have remorse for them? None of us should say we could never do this sin or that sin, since all of us are sinners and fully capable of sinning.
 
Good point’s guys… Thank you…

I suppose I should feel remorse for the guy, he must have been really really distressed and not completely mentally there…

I guess I feel this way because, I’m so incredibly scared of death it’s not funny. To the point where I’m always paranoid about things… I don’t know how I got this way, I never was like this before… A serious lack in my trust of God.

Any advice regarding that?
 
Is suicide always a sin? what if the person is mentally disabled and not able to comprehend right from wrong? Or what if they think they’re doing the right thing? where do you draw the line? For me, I draw the line when a person is mentally stable enough to know that it is wrong to do. Once they are so far gone that they are unable to comprehend that it is wrong, I don’t see how they could be held fully responsible. What about you guys? When do you draw the line?
 
We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, even our enemies. Therefore, I believe that we should show at least a little bit of remorse for those who have killed themselves. If someone has committed suicide then obviously they were in a lot of emotional distress before that and possibly they were even experiencing psychosis which would more than likely reduce their culpability for the sin of suicide which can be a mortal sin. That said, I believe that we should always pray for the repose of the souls of all people, including those who have committed suicide.
 
I’ve had four friends commit suicide - two of them were especially close (one was like a younger brother to me, the other was a young woman that I had fallen in love with).

You can’t begin to imagine how devastating it is to find out the ones that you love have taken their own life.

I dealt with anger (they didn’t say goodbye, they left me, they took the easy way out), with guilt (if only I had been a better friend, if only I had said this, if only I had paid more attention to them, if only I had seen the signs… and then I felt guilty for feeling angry), as well as a lot of unknowns (are they in a better place, are they in hell, are they in purgatory, will they get to heaven)… and a lot of other emotions as well.

And then I had to wonder about their emotional state; how desperate they might have felt, how isolated they might have perceived themselves to be, how distraught they may have been, how alone they saw themselves. I asked myself why, why, WHY?

The little bit I have written here doesn’t even begin to describe what I went through emotionally. I could write pages on the subject. And then there are the families and other friends… Suicide is emotionally up-heaving when someone has left you behind; I can’t even begin to know what is going through the head of someone that chooses to take their own life.

I pray for my friends often. I don’t know if my prayers help them or do any good. It might be too late for them - I don’t know.

And I pray for ALL of the souls of the people that have committed suicide. I hope and pray that God is merciful and that he forgives them, and that he welcomes them into his kingdom.
 
I don’t believe you can force yourself to be remorseful, but you can work on being compassionate to his emotional state - how low could he have been to take his own life?

I can’t *begin * to imagine being in a place where suicide seems the best point of action. Even though I cannot understand it, I cannot in turn just schluff it off as his decision and no one else’s. The truth is, we live in an evil world in which many people live to bring others down who are much weaker than they. The world is not so black and white. This is where compassion comes in. We need to make sure we bring love and understanding to each and every person we meet, difficult as it may be. Maybe this way, in the despair of suicidal thoughts, Christians can shine through to those suffering as examples of Christ’s love in a world that is so anti-Christ, anti-love. Compassion from one can beget hope in another!
 
RastaPasta said:
I’ve had four friends commit suicide - two of them were especially close (one was like a younger brother to me, the other was a young woman that I had fallen in love with).

You can’t begin to imagine how devastating it is to find out the ones that you love have taken their own life.

I dealt with anger (they didn’t say goodbye, they left me, they took the easy way out), with guilt (if only I had been a better friend, if only I had said this, if only I had paid more attention to them, if only I had seen the signs… and then I felt guilty for feeling angry), as well as a lot of unknowns (are they in a better place, are they in hell, are they in purgatory, will they get to heaven)… and a lot of other emotions as well.

And then I had to wonder about their emotional state; how desperate they might have felt, how isolated they might have perceived themselves to be, how distraught they may have been, how alone they saw themselves. I asked myself why, why, WHY?

The little bit I have written here doesn’t even begin to describe what I went through emotionally. I could write pages on the subject. And then there are the families and other friends… Suicide is emotionally up-heaving when someone has left you behind; I can’t even begin to know what is going through the head of someone that chooses to take their own life.

I pray for my friends often. I don’t know if my prayers help them or do any good. It might be too late for them - I don’t know.

And I pray for ALL of the souls of the people that have committed suicide. I hope and pray that God is merciful and that he forgives them, and that he welcomes them into his kingdom.
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Thanks for sharing - that must have been difficult. You must be incredibly strong for God to have given you such grief to suffer. I will keep you and your friends in my prayers.
 
Back when I was a young girl ages 11–14 I was suicidal. I was gong through a deep depression and really not in my right mind. At the time I really saw no other way out of my situation. I am now a happy adult and am glad I made it through that and having been that way in the past it has helped me not only gain understanding of people going through that, but it has helped me reach out to them.

Instead of not caring for them and saying “why should I care, they did it to themselves?” we should be reaching out to these people in pain. I wish someone would have reached out to me. No one did. We need to try to prevent people from going to such extreme measures to get out of whatever situation they are in.

Also many people who are suicidal are mentally ill. My grandmother killed herself back in the 50’s due to acute paranoid schizophrenia. She obviously wasn’t culpable for this sin and wasn’t in her right mind. Most people who choose to commit suicide are usually not in their right minds and in need of help.

We should never be uncaring of the death of any other human being. Every human life is of so much value and should be cherished and when lost, mourned, no matter how we feel about how their life ended.
 
I always feel remorse for the suicide victim and their family especially after having lost my brother Patrick right after he turned 40.It is a tragedy because there are so many options out there;medication,hospitalization,therapy and support groups.But the worse tragedy is we are interfering with Gods plans for us.Who knows what impact the suicide victim might have made in someone elses life or in society had they chosen life.Tunnel vision is the inability to visualize other options,and unfortunately many suicides see only one way out.
 
PumpkinSeed said:
Is suicide always a sin? what if the person is mentally disabled and not able to comprehend right from wrong? Or what if they think they’re doing the right thing? where do you draw the line? For me, I draw the line when a person is mentally stable enough to know that it is wrong to do. Once they are so far gone that they are unable to comprehend that it is wrong, I don’t see how they could be held fully responsible. What about you guys? When do you draw the line?
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Suicide is always a grave act but there’s so much more to it than that. The first criterion for a mortal sin is that the sin must be a grave act. So suicide definitely meets that criterion. The second criterion is that the person who commits suicide must *know *hat suicide is a grave act. That could be true or perhaps not. The third criterion is that the person who commits suicide does so with full consent. I think that’s very, very rare. Who wakes up in the morning, feeling good and decides that today is the day to kill himself? People who commit suicide are usually extremely depressed or are psychotic or having an extreme adverse reaction to a medication (I was on one of those once; so many people killed themselves that it was taken off the market).

So suicide is not always a sin; I think it rarely is. You’ve mentioned mental disability, the inability to comprehend right from wrong, the (I’m adding mistaken) belief that they are doing the right thing. Those factors reduce culpability to the point where is may not be a sin at all but an act of someone who feels that he is already in hell and is suffering to the point where life is just too painful to bear and oh so easy to give up.

My husband took his own life when he was 26 years old. There are a lot of things he did wrong. He abandoned his family, including a wife and unborn son, he caused pain and suffering beyond belief to others, and he did not try to get help because he thought that only “sissies” took medication.

It’s not my place to judge him. But because I knew him I can say there were factors that reduced his culpability. I do not believe he is in hell. Actually I believe he is in heaven because of a plenary indulgence made on his behalf (I can always hope and I can always pray for him anyway).

The Church does not teach that people who commit suicide go to hell. A lot of people are confused about that.

I see a lot of caring and love in this thread and I want to say “thank you” because it’s made me feel a lot better about my husband and about me. I’m suicidal right now - I can’t help thoughts that enter my mind unbidden. But I won’t take action on these thoughts except to pray that they go away. And I ask for prayers from others in this thread, if they are inclined to do so (I would appreciate it very much as I’m having a very hard time right now).

One of the worst things that people said to me after my husband’s suicide was that he had been damned and that was what the Church teaches. Gee, thanks for your concern for my feelings and your lack of knowledge about real Church teaching! They made it sound like God was just waiting for my husband to pull the trigger so that He could gleefully damn him to hell. God loves us! He wants us to be with Him. Why would He allow a depressed, suffering, confused person to be damned?
 
Franna said:
I always feel remorse for the suicide victim and their family especially after having lost my brother Patrick right after he turned 40.It is a tragedy because there are so many options out there;medication,hospitalization,therapy and support groups.But the worse tragedy is we are interfering with Gods plans for us.Who knows what impact the suicide victim might have made in someone elses life or in society had they chosen life.Tunnel vision is the inability to visualize other options,and unfortunately many suicides see only one way out.
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I made a serious attempt once and I have to admit that I only saw that way out. But looking back it’s hard for me to understand why I couldn’t see that there were so many other options.

That old saying “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem” is so true.
 
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