Thoughts on a friend's suicide

[saramichelle6]

My good friend (and former roommate) called late last week to tell me that her younger brother (Mark*, 18 years old) had committed suicide. I did my best to be there for her, picking her up to go with her to tell her sister the bad news and praying with them before they left to go to their hometown to be with family.

I attended his funeral yesterday. It was a very sad service, one filled with beautiful music, because the entire family is very musical.

One part I was nervous about and now don’t know what to do is when Mark’s father spoke. He is a former Baptist preacher, and gave a very passionate speech about his son, life, and being saved. During the service, he said that it didn’t matter that his son had committed suicide, because he had Jesus Christ in his heart and therefore went to heaven. Many of Mark’s friends from high school were there, and the service started to feel a little like he was trying to get people to be saved at the service. I was uncomfortable because I’m unsure of the Catholic Church’s stance on suicide.

It is true, Mark tried his best to outwardly live a righteous life, was kind to everyone and very compassionate and helpful. He spoke openly to anyone who asked him about his Faith and even said that “God is going to do something special with me.” He gave no indication that he was unhappy or wanted to end his life. I would love to believe that Mark is in heaven, but I’m just not sure what to think.

I have been praying for the family a lot in their time of grief. I want to be there for my friend, but I’m not comfortable telling her that I’m sure about Mark going straight to heaven because he was “saved.”

Thoughts?

*name changed

 

[CHESTERTONRULES]

My good friend (and former roommate) called late last week to tell me that her younger brother (Mark*, 18 years old) had committed suicide. I did my best to be there for her, picking her up to go with her to tell her sister the bad news and praying with them before they left to go to their hometown to be with family.

I attended his funeral yesterday. It was a very sad service, one filled with beautiful music, because the entire family is very musical.

One part I was nervous about and now don’t know what to do is when Mark’s father spoke. He is a former Baptist preacher, and gave a very passionate speech about his son, life, and being saved. During the service, he said that it didn’t matter that his son had committed suicide, because he had Jesus Christ in his heart and therefore went to heaven. Many of Mark’s friends from high school were there, and the service started to feel a little like he was trying to get people to be saved at the service. I was uncomfortable because I’m unsure of the Catholic Church’s stance on suicide.

It is true, Mark tried his best to outwardly live a righteous life, was kind to everyone and very compassionate and helpful. He spoke openly to anyone who asked him about his Faith and even said that “God is going to do something special with me.” He gave no indication that he was unhappy or wanted to end his life. I would love to believe that Mark is in heaven, but I’m just not sure what to think.

I have been praying for the family a lot in their time of grief. I want to be there for my friend, but I’m not comfortable telling her that I’m sure about Mark going straight to heaven because he was “saved.”

Thoughts?

*name changed

The Church leaves open the possiblity of repentence for those who commit suicide. We don’t know what was going on inside their minds. In addtion, this is often a sign of mental sickness of some sort that may be responsible for the action taken.

From the catechism:

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.

 

[lil_flower_luv]

I am very sorry for the loss of your friend’s brother.

I looked up what a Catholic Encyclopedia had to say:

The teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the morality of
suicide may be summarized as follows:

Positive and Direct Suicide

Positive and direct suicide perpetrated without God’s consent
always constitutes a grave injustice towards Him. To destroy a
thing is to dispose of it as an absolute master and to act as one
having full and independent dominion over it; but man does not
possess this full and independent dominion over his life, since to
be an owner one must be superior to his property. God has reserved
to himself direct dominion over life; He is the owner of its
substance and He has given man only the serviceable dominion, the
right of use, with the charge of protecting and preserving the
substance, that is, life itself. Consequently suicide is an
attempt against the dominion and right of ownership of the
Creator. To this injustice is added a serious offence against the
charity I which man owes to himself, since by his act he deprives
himself of the greatest good in his possession 1 and the
possibility of attaining his final end. Moreover, the sin may be
aggravated by circumstances, such as failure ih conjugal,
paternal, or filial piety, failure in justice or charity, if by
taking his life one I eludes existing obligations of justice or
acts of charity ;, which he could and should perform. That suicide
is unlawful is the teaching of Holy Scripture and of the Church,
which condemns the act as a most atrocious crime. (Until quite
recently, in hatred of the sin and to arouse the horror of its
children, the Church denied Christian burial to the suicide.)
Moreover, suicide is directly opposed to the most powerful and
invincible tendency of every creature and especially of man, the
preservation of life. Finally, for a sane man deliberately to take
his own life, he must, as a general rule, first have annihilated
in himself all that he possessed of spiritual life, since suicide
is in absolute contradiction to everything that the Christian
religion teaches us as to the end and object of life and, except
in cases of insanity, is usually the natural termination of a life
of disorder, weakness, and cowardice…

Positive and Direct Suicide is not the only kind of suicide according to the Church…others here:

ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/14326B.TXT

God Bless.

 

[lil_flower_luv]

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.

Thank you for finding that!

 

[Christy_Beth]

Mental sickness? Don’t you mean mental illness? As someone who has been diagnosed with several, including depression, I think I understand it a bit better. I had full blown major depression from an early age. But I learned to hide it because nobody seemed to take it seriously. No one wants to be around a whiner. And, yes, I attempted suicide. Three times. Why? Because I wanted the pain to end.

I’m not sure I can explain it for what it is. I had great emotional/mental pain. Life was a suffering for me. I guess you could say it was a bit like what I imagine purgatory to be. But without the positive “light at the end of the tunnel” part. Don’t pity anyone like me. What is needed is compassion. And don’t be fooled by outward appearance. “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.” I had a fake smile on my face for far too many years.

 

[Bluegoat]

Some Baptists do have a somewhat different view than Catholics about how we “know” we are going to heaven. And I think it is natural for a father to see it that way. As well, in general priests and ministers both often see a funeral as a time to talk about what is required for salvation, and that message is meant for the mourners. Death is a time when people ponder such things and the natural time for any religious leader to talk about them.

 

[lil_flower_luv]

Some Baptists do have a somewhat different view than Catholics about how we “know” we are going to heaven. And I think it is natural for a father to see it that way. As well, in general priests and ministers both often see a funeral as a time to talk about what is required for salvation, and that message is meant for the mourners. Death is a time when people ponder such things and the natural time for any religious leader to talk about them.

That is right. As it says in the CCC, “By ways known to Him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance,” to those who take their life.

 

[aspawloski4th]

Mental sickness? Don’t you mean mental illness? As someone who has been diagnosed with several, including depression, I think I understand it a bit better. I had full blown major depression from an early age. But I learned to hide it because nobody seemed to take it seriously. No one wants to be around a whiner. And, yes, I attempted suicide. Three times. Why? Because I wanted the pain to end.

I’m not sure I can explain it for what it is. I had great emotional/mental pain. Life was a suffering for me. I guess you could say it was a bit like what I imagine purgatory to be. But without the positive “light at the end of the tunnel” part. Don’t pity anyone like me. What is needed is compassion. And don’t be fooled by outward appearance. “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.” I had a fake smile on my face for far too many years.

Well put. In many cases these days the pourpose of suicide is to end pain, usually of the mental or emotional type. The reason why suicide is misunderstood by many is when we are talking mental and emotional pain, we are talking about something that affects different people differently. Being un loved maybe a minor pain to one while excrusiating to another. What makes one person tick, has no effect on another. One person might be content to surviving to the nextday, while for me surviving to the nextday serves no pourpose unless ive moved closer to solving a societal problem… A little over a year I had a dear friend commit suicide. It was over guilt of her family splitting up over a divorce that she had no possible way of stopping. Making peoples lives better in a one on one manner is what made her tick. She blamed herself for the divorce maing it worse for her 2 daugheters making things opposite of what she tried so hard for. It was far too much pain for her to bear. One of the good she did for others was talked me down out of a panic attack and taking my own life, and she called long distance on her own dime to do it to boot. While God sees whats in one’s heart, he knows if that heart is broken. So I propose that when one takes their life on account of a broken heart. I my self would list their cause of death as a broken heart.

 

[stringbeanduck]

Well, we don’t have the authority to say who is for sure going to heaven and hell. It may very be that Mark had a mental something or other. Or he could have been going through a rough patch and didn’t know how to handle the stress.

I don’t think any parent would want to have any doubt about thier kid going to heaven, so it’s only natural for the father, in an effort to put his and other minds at ease, that the son did go to heaven. Unfortunetly though, salvation doesn’t work that way and none of us can say for sure. But we can pray for his soul which is what Mark really needs.

 

[Christy_Beth]

We also need to pray for, and with, each other. We aren’t meant to be disconnected from others. I have a tendency to do that, which is one thing I’m working on. We are called the Body of Christ for a reason, we need each other.

 

[lil_flower_luv]

We also need to pray for, and with, each other. We aren’t meant to be disconnected from others. I have a tendency to do that, which is one thing I’m working on. We are called the Body of Christ for a reason, we need each other.

Word’s of wisdom! God calls the Church to be one.