Suicide pill in wartime?

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HomeschoolDad

HomeschoolDad

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I have wondered if this would be permissible in Catholic moral theology. To put the finest point possible on it, it seems as though it wouldn’t be allowable to avoid torture or imprisonment. However, what of being interrogated to divulge sensitive security information?

Even if you could make the case that one’s will would be strong enough to resist any temptation to divulge secrets even under torture, the enemy could always inject you with truth serum, and get their information while your free will is impaired. Might it be defensible to do the ultimate to prevent this from happening?
 
No, Suicide is NOT permitted by the Catholic Church.
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Suicide in the event of capture Philosophy
Recently a Russian soldier was victim of an attempted capture by Jihadists. In the midst, he managed to blow himself up. Was this a moral decision? In the event, what would have been the more/lesser virtuous of decisions? Please note, we are not here to judge the soldier’s soul. Let him rest in peace, and pray for his memory.
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Short answer: No. Try not to complicate it, as we know who is behind simplicity and who is behind complexity.
 
The supposed justification for taking a suicide pill is the expected consequences; if we live, X will happen; if we die, Y will happen. The fallacy is that we cannot know the consequences either way. It is not possible for us to know.

In any case, consequences (or intentions) are only one of the three factors which determine the morality of an act.

Here is a little background reading for you:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a4.htm
 
A stronger moral argument against the suicide pill could be made from concepts like the dignity of the human person and the inestimable value of a human life. We should not throw our life away in order to avoid suffering (as by torture), nor should we trade our life for something of lesser value such as secrecy. (Secrecy, after all, tends to be short-lived if not altogether illusory.)
 
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The problem here is that you cannot imagine the horrible, unspeakable tortures and mutilations that a person may have to endure. You should go through those unspeakable tortures and mutilations first, and then answer whether or not it would be gravely wrong to commit suicide to avoid hell on earth.
 
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We can’t give a pre-emptive go-ahead for anybody to commit suicide ever, for any reason.
Full stop.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
the enemy could always inject you with truth serum,
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That works great in the movies, real life is not like that. If such a dependable “truth serum” existed, it would be part of the process, every person falsely accused of a crime would beg for this serum. We would not need judges or juries, just lab techs.

The Catechism speaks of things that diminish the culpability for suicide.
 
I tend to think that the end, as noble as it is (removing the possibility of divulging secrets), could not justify the means. I was just wondering if this could fall under the rubric of “giving one’s life for one’s country”.
 
I would conclude that direct suicide is not licit, but banzai charging is, provided that your capture would result in your execution or make it easier for the enemy to kill your comrades. After all, when one attacks the enemy without regard for one’s own life, the enemy may perhaps flee in terror, or perhaps a miracle will give you the strength of Samson to achieve victory in the face of overwhelming odds.
 
It’s not permissible. My mother told me there was quite a debate about this when Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Soviet Russia. I’m editing my post here because I was told Powers was Catholic, but I can’t find a source confirming this and maybe I heard wrong. In any event he chose not to use his suicide pill when he crashed. There was concern he would give up state secrets under torture or brainwashing. The Church still said the suicide pill was unacceptable.

I would imagine if a Catholic fearing torture or other bad consequences did use the suicide pill, God would be merciful and consider the mental strain they were under and the effect on their free will, but it would still be a sin to take the pill.

You could also attempt to flee or defend yourself, which might or might not result in your death, but that wouldn’t be a sin.
 
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AlNg said:
and then answer whether or not it would be gravely wrong to commit suicide to avoid hell on earth.
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No, it’s gravely wrong regardless. We don’t need to go through anything and it doesn’t change the Church teaching if we do. Remember, this is a church with thousands of martyrs, many of whom were gruesomely killed.

The wrong might be MITIGATED by the circumstances, but that’s not the same as saying suicide is okay in the first place.
 
These hypotheticals are always a useless exercise. Murdering yourself is not an option. It isn’t holy or ever permitted. Come up with any crazy scenario.

This is exactly what relativism feeds on. “Ok I know it is wrong BUT what about these circumstances?”
 
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It wasn’t a hypothetical. Francis Gary Powers was precisely who I had in mind when I posed the question. My reasoning was:

We are certainly allowed to kill an unjust aggressor in wartime, indeed, we would be letting our country down if we did not kill him. What, then, would be permitted if we were forced, through a cruel twist of fate, to become that aggressor (by divulging state secrets), and that the only way to remove the threat posed by the aggressor was by killing the aggressor? Could it not be said that the soldier would be allowed to take his life as a form of “giving his life for his country”?

Clearly, the Church has said otherwise, as Tis_Bearself cites. I did not know that before I asked the question.
 
It is a hypothetical because you did not specify a particular case at the begging of the question. Sometimes we just need to step back and rely on not only Church teaching but employing logic to morality. These “hard” questions are many times very simple.
I heard a quote once, it might have been in a book or on a dumb TV show or movie but the gist of it was. “The answer is extremely simple, doing it is hard.” This is how most of these issues are. And it raises it’s head in all aspects of modern moral society. Abortion for people that are raped or the life of the mother is in danger, mercy killing of euthanasia, gay marriage and adoption, murder, premarital sex, other sexual issues… Etc. What these exercises do is take a moral truth, and bend it with emotional circumstances and a false application of mercy to ultimately make something bad, permissible, or even a good. Now who does that sound like? What tempter does that make you think of?

Yes, there is the over correction of just plain old black and white, non nuanced, merciless, letter of law following, answers that Jesus also condemned. But no where does Christ take an objective moral evil and then make it permissible because of weakness, confusion, or emotion. Morality for a Christian is rooted in the Truths of the faith, Truths that are governed by mercy but fail to change evil into virtue. We have lost this in out modern times, in our modern culture. I mean we can’t even decide what bathroom to use. Truth has been warped.
 
I look to the Martyrs of the Church and pray that I wold have their strength, courage, and conviction if I were in a situation where I was facing torture, etc.
 
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