Why Is Suicide Considered Wrong?

[Christy_Beth]

Thank you. It’s nice to know that someone else understands. It’s truly hard to explain to those who have never known first hand what it’s like to be either mentally ill or have someone they know who is mentally ill. At least, those who don’t tell them to just “snap out of it.” If only it were that easy.

I’m 47, and have been depressed since the age of 7. When I was young it was believed that children don’t get depressed. Also there was a big stigma attached to mental illness. There still is, to some degree. For most of my life my mental problems went untreated. Sure, I tried counseling several times. But that never addressed my “issues.” It’s kind of like being in a crowded room and yet being ignored. One could yell and scream all they want, but still get ignored. That’s why it’s good to hear that someone “on the outside” tries to at least understand it.

Suicide is, of course, never the answer. But if someone has full blown depression, they can’t see any other way out. All they see is the pain. And sometimes we, without meaning to, make matters worse. If a child cries in pain, we listen. As children of God, we should listen to the cries of others who are just as much His as we are.

 

[djeter]

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?

You might consider this essay on euthanasia “The False Gods of Expedient Mercy.” It introduces a reading selection from A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., 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.

It also features some of Sally Thomas’ gripping account of a modern day euthanasia episode in Amsterdam that was recently in First Things. Perhaps when you think of these things you might see why the Church’s truth, while difficult, can be the only answer.

You’ll find it all here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/09/29/the-false-gods-of-expedient-mercy/

In Christ,

dj

WHOOPS! A double post, my bad. Did this a week ago.

 

[jkatpc]

The US population has been steadily climbing. In 1950, the US population was 158 million people. We now have over 300 million people. What will happen in the next 50 years?

You are confusing replacement rate with population growth. They are not synonymous. The replacement rate, which is really about 2.1 children per woman (not couple), is the requirement to maintain society as we know it. It isn’t enough to have growth–you have to have enough growth to sustain a working population that can support the elderly population and also reproduce to have support themselves when they grow older. The working population also has to be large enough to support the needs (food, shelter, energy) of the existing population (elderly, working, young, non-working). A society that does not reproduce at at least the replacement rate will “produce” elderly at a greater rate than workers. Assuming a Soylent Green alternative isn’t effected, eventually the “productive” element of society cannot support the “dependent” element.

 

[MumboJumbo]

You are confusing replacement rate with population growth. They are not synonymous. The replacement rate, which is really about 2.1 children per woman (not couple), is the requirement to maintain society as we know it. It isn’t enough to have growth–you have to have enough growth to sustain a working population that can support the elderly population and also reproduce to have support themselves when they grow older. The working population also has to be large enough to support the needs (food, shelter, energy) of the existing population (elderly, working, young, non-working). A society that does not reproduce at at least the replacement rate will “produce” elderly at a greater rate than workers. Assuming a Soylent Green alternative isn’t effected, eventually the “productive” element of society cannot support the “dependent” element.

That sounds like a problem that has no solution. Did you also consider that women in some countries, like the US, are giving birth later in life. While the overpopulated countries have “children” giving birth to babies.

I have that movie, “Soylent Green”. That is where I got the idea of people going somewhere to end their life when they no longer feel like living it.

 

[jkatpc]

That sounds like a problem that has no solution. Did you also consider that women in some countries, like the US, are giving birth later in life. While the overpopulated countries have “children” giving birth to babies.

I have that movie, “Soylent Green”. That is where I got the idea of people going somewhere to end their life when they no longer feel like living it.

Of course the problem has a solution. You have to replace the population with at least 2.1 people per woman to maintain what you have now for when you get older. It doesn’t matter if women are giving birth later in life–they are also living longer. As long as they can produce at least that many children, there will be a viable work force that can support what they have now. Yes, the population does grow in lesser developed countries where birth control is not as prevalent (or is illegal) as here. Guess where the largest replacement rates are? It isn’t India or China–it’s in Muslim countries where having children is regarded as almost a religious obligation. What demographic engineers are seeing is a migration from those countries with a high replacement rate to those with a lower one because lower replacement rates equate to more available jobs. No duh. As people die off without adequate replacements to carry on their work function, jobs will go unfilled. We are seeing that now in Europe, which has an abysmal replacement rate–nearing the point of failure. Look at the Islamic populations of France, Germany and Scandinavia compared with just twenty or thirty years ago.

This isn’t my theory. It’s pretty well established and several smart sociological scientists (I guess that’s what they are) have written on it.

 

[Janechantal53]

Everything you need to know has been said here.

Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

What is there “not to like”? Why would anyone wish more punishment and harm on someone who suffered so much that they took their own life?

 

[MumboJumbo]

You are confusing replacement rate with population growth. They are not synonymous. The replacement rate, which is really about 2.1 children per woman (not couple), is the requirement to maintain society as we know it. It isn’t enough to have growth–you have to have enough growth to sustain a working population that can support the elderly population and also reproduce to have support themselves when they grow older. The working population also has to be large enough to support the needs (food, shelter, energy) of the existing population (elderly, working, young, non-working). A society that does not reproduce at at least the replacement rate will “produce” elderly at a greater rate than workers. Assuming a Soylent Green alternative isn’t effected, eventually the “productive” element of society cannot support the “dependent” element.

Isn’t the replacement rate reached when one person is born for every person who dies?

 

[jkatpc]

Isn’t the replacement rate reached when one person is born for every person who dies?

Not quite. The replacement rate of 2.1 accounts for the woman and her mate. It also accounts for the reality that one man may father children by more than one woman. Factored into the number is the attrition rate of children dying before becoming a viable work force member, and women dying before they need the benefits of their children’s work force.

 

[Flopfoot]

What is there “not to like”? Why would anyone wish more punishment and harm on someone who suffered so much that they took their own life?

That’s not the bit that I don’t like.

 

[Janechantal53]

That’s not the bit that I don’t like.

Glad to hear it.

 

[CSUNGerrie]

Someone might have already mentioned this but… G.K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy:

“Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil,
the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take
the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man.
The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned
he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered)
than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings:
it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds;
but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed,
even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief
compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them.
But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it.
He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake.
There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death
is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves
might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury:
for each has received a personal affront.”

 

[Lutheranteach]

Suicide is, as one crisis counselor told a class of mine, a permanent solution to a temporary problem

 

[Janechantal53]

Someone might have already mentioned this but… G.K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy:

“Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil,
the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take
the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man.
The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned
he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered)
than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings:
it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds;
but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed,
even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief
compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them.
But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it.
He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake.
There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death
is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves
might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury:
for each has received a personal affront.”

G. K. Chesterton is not taking mental illness into consideration here. I work with it every day and it is profoundly sad. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not presume to be as judgemental as the above referenced quote.

 

[Brendan]

G. K. Chesterton is not taking mental illness into consideration here. I work with it every day and it is profoundly sad. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not presume to be as judgemental as the above referenced quote.

No GKC is quite correct, and yes, he does take mental illness into account. He refers to it as a SIN. Sin, as we know in Catholic teaching, can only be committed by those who can give consent, who have the use of reason.

Mental illness, by definition, is a reduction in those faculties. It can only be a sin to those who have the mental faculties to choose it.

 

[Janechantal53]

No GKC is quite correct, and yes, he does take mental illness into account. He refers to it as a SIN. Sin, as we know in Catholic teaching, can only be committed by those who can give consent, who have the use of reason.

Mental illness, by definition, is a reduction in those faculties. It can only be a sin to those who have the mental faculties to choose it.

How is it that GKC is “quite correct” when most people who commit suicide are not in a rational state of mind? One could argue that no one that commits suicide is in a “rational state.” Sin is a personal matter and none but God and the “sinner” actually knows what is in his/her heart and mind. It is a requirement for me to love know-it-alls who judge even when the Lord Himself tells us not to. Sadly, I frequently fail.

 

[CWBetts]

How is it that GKC is “quite correct” when most people who commit suicide are not in a rational state of mind? One could argue that no one that commits suicide is in a “rational state.” Sin is a personal matter and none but God and the “sinner” actually knows what is in his/her heart and mind. It is a requirement for me to love know-it-alls who judge even when the Lord Himself tells us not to. Sadly, I frequently fail.

GKC is correct. Naming something as a sin is not judgement. Even if most suicides are committed bu those not in full control of their actions, it is irrelevant. Chesterton is referring to those who consciously decide to end their lives of their own free will.

 

[Janechantal53]

Chesterton is referring to those who consciously decide to end their lives of their own free will./QUOTE

You can hypothetically say anything; it doesn’t make it true. I don’t believe those people exist. What kind of experience are you speaking from?

 

[CSUNGerrie]

Nihilists are one example.

 

[Janechantal53]

Nihilists are one example.

A fancy word for people who are in despair because they believe that life is pointless. Note the word “despair” - a psychological state that is a contributing factor in suicide.

 

[CWBetts]

A fancy word for people who are in despair because they believe that life is pointless. Note the word “despair” - a psychological state that is a contributing factor in suicide.

You really need to understand that despair is not an excuse for sin. As long as you still have the presence of mind to realize what you are doing, you are culpable.