The Fifth Commandment and Suicide

One

The Catholic Church always distinguishes between how evil a sin is and how responsible somebody is for committing that sin. You can do something really bad – really bad. But if you don’t know that it’s really bad, or maybe you’re not thinking straight, or maybe you’re mentally ill, or maybe there’s something else going on that makes it impossible to control your actions, like an addiction or something else, then, as the Catechism teaches (1735) your responsibility and guilt for doing something really bad can be reduced or even totally removed. 

Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.

The Catechism teaches that, “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.”

Now in the last century or so, we have come to realize that many of the people who commit suicide may not be fully responsible for their actions. So, even if someone has committed suicide, we can still hope for his or her salvation. But unfortunately, we also seem to be losing sight of how abominably, horrifically evil an act it is to kill yourself. What a betrayal, what an insult to humanity, what a violation of love, what an act of hatred it is.

And as this atrocity becomes more commonplace and less remarkable, we need to remind ourselves why this is such a deep, deep transgression against the commandment, “Thou Shall Not Kill.” 

Two

As a crime against love of yourself

St. Thomas says that Suicide is a sin against three parties: yourself, society, and God. 

And it’s a sin against yourself insofar as you are attacking human goodness.

You are good. It is never right to deliberately destroy innocent human life, because a human being is good. We are called to love those who are closest to us – and to love someone first of all means to celebrate their existence. But we are the ones closest to us. So first and foremost, we are meant to celebrate our own existence – which, essentially, means being grateful for the gift of life. 

Morality is love of humanity. Immorality is attacking humanity. How, then, could it ever be moral to hate the humanity that’s closest to you, to attack the humanity that’s closest to you?

Most people should be able to see that it’s obviously immoral to hate the person closest to you and try to destroy that person’s goodness. And that’s, first of all, why suicide is so radically evil. Because you are the person closest to you – and you should celebrate, not attack, your own existence.

Three

As a crime against society

Aquinas says that suicide is also a crime of injustice to society. And it surely is.

Anytime somebody attacks a member of your society, it’s a grave offense to you.

Do you remember 9/11? What American didn’t feel that personally? They attacked us by murdering those members of our society. They declared war on us. 

Or imagine that someone walked into your house, and just shot one of your own family members point-blank.

How could you not take that personally? What could somebody do to you that was more egregious and hateful than kill a member of your family?

But that’s what a suicide does. He declares war not just on himself, but on the family and the community he’s a part of. Every suicide leaves a trail of wreckage behind him. He leaves a crater in his community, and in his family. 

We have this idea that the person who commits suicide is just choosing to escape. To opt out. He isn’t. 

He’s choosing to attack the people in his life. It’s not an act of escape, it’s an act of aggression, of violence, of terrorism, of hate against the people he should care about most, and who care most about him. That’s another reason it’s so evil. Because it attacks a community by murdering one of its members. 

Four

As a crime against God

Finally, suicide is a crime against God. 

If I go burn down your house, that’s an awful crime, because it’s your house, and it probably means a lot to you. 

Well, we belong to God. Which is why murder is so awful. Because when we destroy an innocent human being, we’re destroying what belongs to God, and we’re destroying something that means a lot to God. Because we do mean an awful lot to God. 

You’d probably be upset if somebody burned down your house. But you probably don’t care so much about your house that you’d lay down your life to save it. But God does care that much about you. 

So how dare you take what belongs to Him – take something He cares about more than His own life – and then destroy it right in front of Him?

What could you do that would be a greater insult to God than directly and deliberately destroying what He loves so much that He’s sacrificed Himself on the Cross to save! 

God has sacrificed more for His human children than for any other kind of thing. 

So you can’t really do anything worse to God than deliberately destroy what He loves so much. And that’s you. 

Which is why suicide is so incredibly evil.

Five

Seeing life as a gift, not a burden

One of the core ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas’ thinking is the principle that the first of all actions is the act of being. Since morality is about our action, that means the first thing we are morally required to do is to exist. The first duty of life is to live. 

Suicide is the failure of that first, primordial, privileged duty. But we can also say that as long as we’re still breathing, we’re at least fulfilling that first fundamental duty. 

We could be dead, but we’re not, so at least we’re doing one very important thing right. 

There are a lot of other things, a lot of other duties, where we might feel like we’re not doing such a great job. But at least we’re alive. And that’s a good thing. That’s a great thing. It’s a beautiful baseline. 

The fact that you exist in the world makes the world a better place. Your family thinks so, your community thinks so, and God knows so. 

You are making a fundamental contribution to the overall goodness of the world by being alive. Don’t ever do anything to deliberately withdraw that contribution.

And the number one thing we should do toward every person in our life is demonstrate to them over and over and never quit – that we really delight in them – that we think “It is good that you exist, how wonderful you are – you make the world better just because you are here!”