Why Is Suicide Considered Wrong?

[MumboJumbo]

Why Is Suicide Considered Wrong?

When people are so poor that they can’t live anymore and they are without hope of receiving help from anyone, why would it be a sin to kill one’s self?

I feel that some of the moral laws about suicide were passed because the poor were being used by the rich to perform slavelabor and most poor people would kill themselves to escape that horrible life if they did not believe that a worse punishment awaited them in hell. I’m sure the rich conspired to see these rules impressed upon the poor so they could use them physically until they were used up.

Take a look at how suicide is viewed. It is considered worse to kill yourself than being guilty of virtually any other crime including murder. Doesn’t the Catholic Church still refuse to bury a suicide under the usually funeral rites that all Catholics are entitled to? Why? What makes this victim of his enviroment any less a victim than one who was beaten to death?

 

[puzzleannie]

Why Is Suicide Considered Wrong?

I feel that some of the moral laws about suicide were passed because

moral laws were not “passed” by some earthly authority, moral law is built into to creation by the Creator. He sets the laws when he determines the nature of those to whom the law applies. He set the planets in motion and placed the stars in the heavens, so he made the laws that govern the heavens, the universe, time, matter, energy. The US congress cannot overturn the laws of gravity or behavior of gases.

God created all life, including human life, and only He can set the term for that life. Suicide is wrong because it places the will of the individual above God’s will, which is the supreme sin, that against the first commandment, where the human claims for himself the privileges and rights that belong to God alone.

no, the Catholic Church does not refuse to bury suicides or bar them from a Catholic funeral. She understands that most often that choice is not made with full free will and knowledge, because the person is prevented by their very pain and suffering, mental or physical, from making full free consent of the will to the act.

To suggest that society enact laws to directly kill, or encourage suicide, for any person who is poor and suffering is barbaric at best and satanic at worst.

 

[CWBetts]

Suicide is wrong because we are not our own creation, and therefore are not our own. If we are not our own, then that means we have no right to to with ourselves as we see fit, but must comply with the wishes of He who did create us. To commit suicide based on the station of one’s life goes further. It is to give into despair, which is the denial of God’s infinite love and His divine mercy.

 

[Eucharisted]

Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Suicide

2280 Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him.
It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life.
We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls.
We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us.
It is not ours to dispose of.

2281 Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life.
It is gravely contrary to the just love of self.
It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations.
Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.

2282 If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal.
Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law.
Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.

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.

 

[manualman]

Where on earth did you get such wacky ideas about suicide?

Why is it wrong? Because it is the ultimate despair. It is a rejection of the GIFT that God has given us: life. Only God gets to be God.

But those who commit suicide are often not in full possession of their faculties. A sin cannot be mortal unless the sinner fully consents to it. If suicide is a complex cocktail of depression, mental illness and actual despair then only God can judge if the suicidal fully consented to the sin or not.

 

[EmeraldWings]

We are not told suicide is worse than any other sin, it is called the unforgivable sin because it is committing a mortal sin right at the moment of death, in which case you have no choice to go to confession,
although we still should not judge if someone has gone to hell just because they committed suicide, because there have been cases, like this one i heard of, a guy flinged himself off a cliff, and before falling all the way, God filled him with the grace to realize what he had just done, and became sorrowful and regretful for it, and was truly sorry, and so he did not go to hell for it.

and of course people who do not know suicide is wrong or a mortal sin, or if they are not in their right mind, God would have mercy on them…

but otherwise, it is never ok to commit suicide, our suffering is no excuse, Jesus suffered for us, and we are supposed to learn from His example, so we should also suffer for Him,
there is joy in suffering when you unite your suffering to Jesus’, and we also learn to love by our suffering, and we show how much we love by it,
your suffering can also save you, by begging pardon for your sins at your judgment,

but i think to answer your question more simply, the church tells us that suicide is a mortal sin, but that only goes for people who know it, because if you don’t know something is a mortal sin, then it is only a venal sin,
but, as catholics, it is our obligation to instruct the ignorant, and admonish sinners, in which case if we were in the situation where someone was thinking of killing themselves, and we said nothing of it being wrong, then we would be in mortal sin,

it’s all very circumstantial…in the end it’s really between you and God,
but just be careful, you should never let someone think it’s ok to kill themselves, because then you would be judged by that.

 

[NoWhereMan]

Why Is Suicide Considered Wrong?

When people are so poor that they can’t live anymore and they are without hope of receiving help from anyone, why would it be a sin to kill one’s self?

I feel that some of the moral laws about suicide were passed because the poor were being used by the rich to perform slavelabor and most poor people would kill themselves to escape that horrible life if they did not believe that a worse punishment awaited them in hell. I’m sure the rich conspired to see these rules impressed upon the poor so they could use them physically until they were used up.

Take a look at how suicide is viewed. It is considered worse to kill yourself than being guilty of virtually any other crime including murder. Doesn’t the Catholic Church still refuse to bury a suicide under the usually funeral rites that all Catholics are entitled to? Why? What makes this victim of his enviroment any less a victim than one who was beaten to death?

The Catholic Church buries many suicides, they just dont tell it, the Church realizes that a person who commits suicide it a person who is unstable & has gone over the edge. The Church has taken a different view on suicide

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

The lines in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” where the angels in heaven are first discussing George Bailey’s predicament always struck me as the most profound way to describe the enormity of suicide:

Superior angel: “At exactly 10.35 Bedford Falls Time, that man is going to consider throwing away God’s greatest gift to him: his life.”

I’m also minded of a story told by one of the Jewish women whom Oskar Schindler rescued from the death camps: she and several dozen others had been “accidentally” routed to Auschwitz and one of the women was about to suicide by throwing herself into an electrified barbed-wire fence. Three other women stopped her and begged her not to do this because, one of them told her, “You won’t know what could have happened to you.” Three days after this, Schindler came to Auschwitz to find out what had happened to them and was able to reason with the camp officials and have the women released into his care…

I’ve been suicidal. I’ve stood on the edge of a culvert over a fast-moving stream and contemplated throwing myself in to end the pain that was eating at me. The only thing that stopped me was the thought that I would be disappointing my family and the realization that I was throwing away the life that God gave me. I still have some amount of pain, but I’m glad I chose to live instead.

The Church stopped the practice of not burying suicides in Catholic cemeteries and of not offering Masses for them: they realized that, of all the people who need the grace of a burial Mass, it is someone who took their life. They recognize now that suicide is really a cry for help and the most searing cry of an anguished soul, not some willful gesture.

 

[Christy_Beth]

I am mentally ill. And not just with major depression, but it’s the depression that I have seen in myself since fairly early childhood. The times I’ve tried to commit suicide, I just wanted the pain to stop. There was no thought as far as sin, or how wrong it was. To me, life was misery. There’s always the talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. But for me, for most of my life there was no light. Even now, after years of therapy and medication, the light is very faint.

Hind sight is 20/20. I’m now 47 and have had depression since the age of 7. Back then, it was believed that children didn’t get depressed. So, my family’s way of dealing with it only made matters worse. And many times “therapy” was of no help. It was a matter of merely talking to/at someone who didn’t really listen, or who thought that just me talking about some stuff that was happening in my life was all that was needed. My full diagnoses came after a hospital stay of 14 months, and about 3 years of outpatient therapy. The doctors just didn’t want to take the time to discuss with me what my actual problems were.

I have been with my current doctor for about 11 years now. And I’m actually getting the help that was so desperately needed for far too long. I won’t say I no longer get depressed. I’m just more able to see beyond that now. For the most part, anyway.

So, please don’t judge someone who has commited suicide. We have no idea of what hell that person was going through. And I think it’s sad that society doesn’t see the need to “love thy neighbor” a little more seriously. If we are neighborly to others, we may see some of the darkness they are in and be able to help. Look around you, pray for those that are going through a hard time. And befriend them if possible. But don’t let that get you pulled into it as well. Pray, pray, pray!!!

 

[NoWhereMan]

I am mentally ill. And not just with major depression, but it’s the depression that I have seen in myself since fairly early childhood. The times I’ve tried to commit suicide, I just wanted the pain to stop. There was no thought as far as sin, or how wrong it was. To me, life was misery. There’s always the talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. But for me, for most of my life there was no light. Even now, after years of therapy and medication, the light is very faint.

Hind sight is 20/20. I’m now 47 and have had depression since the age of 7. Back then, it was believed that children didn’t get depressed. So, my family’s way of dealing with it only made matters worse. And many times “therapy” was of no help. It was a matter of merely talking to/at someone who didn’t really listen, or who thought that just me talking about some stuff that was happening in my life was all that was needed. My full diagnoses came after a hospital stay of 14 months, and about 3 years of outpatient therapy. The doctors just didn’t want to take the time to discuss with me what my actual problems were.

I have been with my current doctor for about 11 years now. And I’m actually getting the help that was so desperately needed for far too long. I won’t say I no longer get depressed. I’m just more able to see beyond that now. For the most part, anyway.

So, please don’t judge someone who has commited suicide. We have no idea of what hell that person was going through. And I think it’s sad that society doesn’t see the need to “love thy neighbor” a little more seriously. If we are neighborly to others, we may see some of the darkness they are in and be able to help. Look around you, pray for those that are going through a hard time. And befriend them if possible. But don’t let that get you pulled into it as well. Pray, pray, pray!!!

Christie, I too suffered from depression from when I was a young child, I know the pain, every moment of our lives seems to be a struggle, seems like nothing fits, & some people are downright mean toward us because of our mental situations. However, I did not lead a perfect life, but God drew me near, I still fall, but I get up as quickly as possible. I too never see any light at the end of the tunnel, But I do Pray, Pray , Pray! Unless others have walked in our shoes, they have no clue as to the pain we suffer, but there are a lot of us out there suffering some type of mental illness

 

[4EverHis]

Suicide is wrong because it’s a result of despair… and falling into despair is a sin. Hope is a theological virtue. Not only that but it’s not up to us to decide when someone (including ourselves) lives or dies, since we don’t create life… we can’t create life so we shouldn’t destroy it.

 

[Timothy_Capps]

Suicide murders the whole universe.

It is often the result of vainglory.

But, as has been pointed out, you never know the state of someone’s soul. People who kill themselves are – usually – by definition mentally ill.

 

[djeter]

Not long ago, in a book review of A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., I offered a reading selection that featured an exchange between the abbot of a monastery thousands of years in the future and a young mother who is going to euthanize her baby to end prolonging a death from exposure to radiation.

It is a stark confrontation: on the one side the Church and on the other a perfect case for euthanasia. And yet the Abbot achieves something here that needs to be repeated again and again in the Church’s confrontation with the culture of death and its false gods of expedient mercy.

You can read it all here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/09/29/the-false-gods-of-expedient-mercy/

dj

 

[Gia_B]

Why Is Suicide Considered Wrong?

When people are so poor that they can’t live anymore and they are without hope of receiving help from anyone, why would it be a sin to kill one’s self?

I feel that some of the moral laws about suicide were passed because the poor were being used by the rich to perform slavelabor and most poor people would kill themselves to escape that horrible life if they did not believe that a worse punishment awaited them in hell. I’m sure the rich conspired to see these rules impressed upon the poor so they could use them physically until they were used up.

Wait. Suicide is wrong because rich people wanted to oppress poor people? That makes no sense. The death of a human being is always a tragedy, regardless of social or economic class.

 

[CWBetts]

Wait. Suicide is wrong because rich people wanted to oppress poor people? That makes no sense. The death of a human being is always a tragedy, regardless of social or economic class.

If killing the unborn is OK, and killing the terminally ill is OK, then why is suicide not OK. Questioning the validity of teachings against suicide is yet another manifestation of the Culture of Death. Only one who sees no intrinsic value in life would think suicide anything other than a tragedy.

 

[choy]

suicide is wrong because, “thou shalt not kill”

it doesn’t matter who you kill, others or yourself, killing is wrong

 

[MumboJumbo]

It should be noted that Sigmund Freud, father of modern psychiatry, committed suicide.

 

[Nominefili]

Why Is Suicide Considered Wrong?

When people are so poor that they can’t live anymore and they are without hope of receiving help from anyone, why would it be a sin to kill one’s self?

I feel that some of the moral laws about suicide were passed because the poor were being used by the rich to perform slavelabor and most poor people would kill themselves to escape that horrible life if they did not believe that a worse punishment awaited them in hell. I’m sure the rich conspired to see these rules impressed upon the poor so they could use them physically until they were used up.

Take a look at how suicide is viewed. It is considered worse to kill yourself than being guilty of virtually any other crime including murder. Doesn’t the Catholic Church still refuse to bury a suicide under the usually funeral rites that all Catholics are entitled to? Why? What makes this victim of his enviroment any less a victim than one who was beaten to death?

I don’t know the particulars of the Catholic policy on suicides, but I can tell you this:

Suicide is self-murder. In other words, it is essentially a murder that one performs on oneself, and can be treated as such. However, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died for murderers, and He therefore died for those who have committed suicide as well. Trust in Him! He is the Christ, the Son of the living God! He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! And He has mercy upon us!

 

[Christy_Beth]

Yes, God have mercy on us all. Sure, you can argue that suicide is murder til the end of time. But, guess what? That doesn’t end the agony of those who suffer mental illness to the extent that they kill themselves. Some may attempt it because they didn’t get their way in something. Or, they got “jilted,” or whatever. But we don’t understand what goes on inside a persons mind or soul.

How can one understand the months and years of despair that goes on inside someone who is mentally ill, except for that one person? The best thing we can do for these people is to love them to the extent that they finally see that God’s love is for them as well as for everyone else. That’s part of what I grew up with. How could I believe that there was a God of love when those who said they loved Him didn’t love me? I often faced rejection inside the church. Oh, not the Catholic church necessarily, I grew up protestant. But rejection can be found in places it shouldn’t be. And this only brings more misery to a suffering soul.

Let’s not be hasty about handing out labels for everyone. Only God can do that. Only, He doesn’t label. He sees sin, and hates it. He sees us, and loves us. Even when we are in the sewer of sin. How many people will admit to being there? If you’re honest with yourself, you would have to say yes. We are there until we let God pull us out. But that doesn’t necessarily cause the stink to go away. We are to go, wash up and change into the clothes that God will supply. And then set out to help the hurting in anyway we can. In whatever way God has called us.

 

[Nominefili]

Yes, God have mercy on us all. Sure, you can argue that suicide is murder til the end of time. But, guess what? That doesn’t end the agony of those who suffer mental illness to the extent that they kill themselves. Some may attempt it because they didn’t get their way in something. Or, they got “jilted,” or whatever. But we don’t understand what goes on inside a persons mind or soul.

How can one understand the months and years of despair that goes on inside someone who is mentally ill, except for that one person? The best thing we can do for these people is to love them to the extent that they finally see that God’s love is for them as well as for everyone else. That’s part of what I grew up with. How could I believe that there was a God of love when those who said they loved Him didn’t love me? I often faced rejection inside the church. Oh, not the Catholic church necessarily, I grew up protestant. But rejection can be found in places it shouldn’t be. And this only brings more misery to a suffering soul.

Let’s not be hasty about handing out labels for everyone. Only God can do that. Only, He doesn’t label. He sees sin, and hates it. He sees us, and loves us. Even when we are in the sewer of sin. How many people will admit to being there? If you’re honest with yourself, you would have to say yes. We are there until we let God pull us out. But that doesn’t necessarily cause the stink to go away. We are to go, wash up and change into the clothes that God will supply. And then set out to help the hurting in anyway we can. In whatever way God has called us.

As someone who has been diagnosed bipolar and attempted suicide myself, I understand wholeheartedly your sentiments. I agree with you 100%. I never intended to ‘hand out labels’ to anyone. I intended to assure that Jesus died for suicidal individuals as well, and if it didn’t come across that way, I sincerely apologize.