Then when Judas, His betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.—Mt 27:3-5.
There are two things that kill the soul: despair and false-hope.—St. Augustine, Sermon 87
Let me say at the outset of this article that I have had friends commit suicide. So, I don’t like writing this. But a major corrective needed to be issued against some high-profile modernist theologians who are currently misleading many vulnerable Catholics on this topic of self-harm. The fact is if this article turns many readers against me but saves one life or one soul, it is worth it.
As we approach Holy Week, I remember how Judas was always my least favorite person in the Passion narratives. It wasn’t just because he betrayed Christ, precipitating His crucifixion, but because his betrayal ends without hope. We know Judas went to hell precisely because Christ said: “The Son of Man goes as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by Whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born”.—Mt 26:24.
The Catholic Church has always held that suicide is murder, not a psychological-game to play of “who can prove reduced culpability.” You see, if your last act on earth was a murder you didn’t have the right to commit, you probably didn’t have time to repent.
The Roman Catechism of Trent (the only infallible catechism) reads: “As to the person who kills, the Commandment recognizes no exception whatever, be he rich or powerful, master or parent. All, without exception or distinction, are forbidden to kill… It also forbids suicide. No man possesses such power over his own life as to be at liberty to put himself to death. Hence we find that the Commandment does not say: Thou shalt not kill another, but simply: Thou shalt not kill.”—Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part III: The Decalogue, Fifth Commandment, page 453.
St. Ambrose believed a group of Christian virgins who ran over a cliff to escape pagan brigands who would violate them were saved because of their intention to preserve chastity ahead of even their earthly life. (Similarly, I still hope for the salvation of a young woman I knew who committed suicide after she couldn’t escape her own mother who wouldn’t let her continue to be Catholic.)
But St. Augustine seems to disagree with his master, St. Ambrose, on this topic. St. Augustine wrote in the City of God: “Anyone who kills himself is certainly a murderer” (Book 1, ch. 17) and “anyone who kills a human being, whether himself or anyone else, is involved in the crime of murder.” (Book 1, chapter 22.)
St. Thomas Aquinas similarly wrote: “I answer that, it is altogether unlawful to kill oneself, for three reasons. First, because everything naturally loves itself, the result being that everything naturally keeps itself in being, and resists corruptions so far as it can. Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself. Hence suicide is always a mortal sin, as being contrary to the natural law and to charity…” —Summa Theologiae, II-II Q 64 Art 5.
Notice above that St. Thomas wrote very objectively that “suicide is always a mortal sin,” without any subjective appraisal of reduced-culpability. This is why the Catholic Church from 33AD until the 1960s refused public Masses or Christian burial to suicides. But nowadays, the subjective feelings of man desiring comfort in the face of his family members killing themselves takes precedent over objective commandments from the Bible. We will see the presumption this teaching has foisted upon millions of modernist Catholics today.
First, I’d like to remind the reader of an article I wrote called The Most Destructive Line in the New Catechism. A quick replay of the article: The new catechism (which makes no claims to infallibility) asserts that self-abuse is not a mortal sin if you can simply prove to yourself “affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.”—CCC 2352.
As I wrote in that article: “If CCC 2352 is correct, then masturbation once a week is a mortal sin, but masturbation three times a day is only a venial sin, as it carries ‘force of acquired habit.’ So, by the very theology of the new CCC, the best way to go from mortal-sin to venial-sin is to… start. masturbating. more.”
This is not me being “polemical.” I have met many young men who came to that disordered conclusion to commit more of “that private sin” precisely because a modernist priest in the confessional advised them they can go to Holy Communion without confession after self-abuse, provided it be the daily habit of porn and self-abuse. Of course, the priest always couches his destructive advice in the CCC.
We see this same deadly outcome on the topic of suicide in the new catechism putting the emphasis not on objective morality (as every previous catechism had done) but subjective reduction of culpability. The new catechism asserts that suicide is not a mortal sin if you can prove to yourself “grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship.” All of these things “can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide”—CCC 2282. Again, this is a catechism that itself makes no claims to infallibility, unlike the Catechism of the Council of Trent (which was declared infallible by a Pope in the 17th century.)
But wait a minute. Literally everyone who commits suicide has some form of “psychological disturbance” or “grave fear of hardship.” In fact, every single person on the planet experiences “a grave fear of hardship.” By the logic of the new catechism, this can only mean one thing at the practical level, even if not desired at the theological level: Everyone who commits suicide is saved. (Of course, we will see later that this teaching is a lie from the devil himself, just to get more people to commit suicide.)
A high-profile modernist priest (not a leftist, surprisingly) applied the above new-catechism line to his family member who committed suicide years ago. He wrote about her: “Did she really want to take her own life apart from any undue influence and burden? I believe not.” In other words, because she acted under the “burden” of life (something we all endure in this valley of tears) she was probably saved when she committed suicide. Like the above self-abuse case, this priest also couches his destructive advice in the CCC. But this priest has now taught presumption of God’s mercy (something he denies) to hundreds of thousands of people—both Catholics and non-Catholics—who might be discerning suicide.
That same priest also strangely teaches that future prayers for a past killing will retroactively save (most? all?) suicides. The heresy here is not that prayer exists outside of time (which is a fine teaching) but that grace is so cheap. How do I know this is an insane theology? Because even atheist-suicides will eventually have someone pray for them. (Watch… There, I just prayed for all past suicides the world-over while writing this blog post.) By this silly logic, those suicides (most? all?) have now been saved by my prayer. But if suicides (people by definition whose last act on earth was a violent murder they were not authorized by God to do) are saved, then clearly all people are saved in all of world history, regardless of their crimes. I would prefer this outcome, but that is the soteriology of Universalist Unitarianism, not real Catholicism.
Now do the math how many thousands of Catholics are currently on psyche meds (often SSRIs) and have learned at some funeral-sermon from a modernist priest that suicides go to Purgatory as long as they can prove to God they had some mental-distress or if someone just prays for them at their funeral. This heresy is leading thousands of mentally-ill Catholics to believe they will be saved if they commit suicide.
No, Father Celebrity, it is not “despair over the Church’s teaching” that is leading to suicides. Rather it’s a despair-before-life combined with a presumption-before-God that leads people to suicide. This we will see in Tristan’s case below.
But first, theologically we must realize it’s so dangerous to think all the Popes and Saints of the past as having missed something that only a clever legalist in the 20th century finally figured out in matters of Divine Revelation. Like Arius or Luther, every heretic today thinks he brilliantly cracked a theological-code of “mercy” missed by every true and Catholic saint of the past who was living in the highest levels of unitive prayer with Jesus Christ Himself.
We seem to have Christ’s own view of the salvation of a suicide when He says of Judas, “better if he had never been born.” Obviously, Christ did not say that line because Christ closed off mercy to Judas. Rather, He said that because Judas closed off mercy to himself in choosing suicide in place of the same repentance that Peter demonstrated. And St. Peter became a great saint long after his great fall. This is the hope that we bring to potential-suicides. Telling them self-harm has no bearing on their eternal life ironically means their lives don’t matter.
Thus, Christ’s shocking line about Judas not being born clearly refers more to Judas’ suicide than his betrayal of Christ. Of course, Christ can forgive any sin. But when a person finally chooses not to be forgiven, that is the end. We have to live in reality, not our emotions on this. Just look at what all the saints say about the fewness of the saved even before we get to the topic of suicide or murder. What we do, especially at the end of our lives, really matters.
That suicide is always a mortal sin is found in St. Thomas Aquinas and the only infallible catechism. This is the Catholic Church’s teaching without peppering in floaty terms like “fear of hardship” which only serve to excuse from sin. The old-school teaching on suicide not only kept millions of Catholics from going to hell, but it also stopped millions of suicides from even happening in the first place. Why? Because Catholics used to be afraid of hell if they pulled the trigger or tightened the noose.
You see, this article isn’t about me wanting more people in hell. It gets to the very heart of why Christ died for ours sins. If all suicides are saved, then everyone is saved. And if everyone is saved, then we should all be Universalist Unitarians, not Catholics, not Christians. In that case, the death of Jesus was not required. So, do you see where this misplaced compassion on suicide terminates in blasphemy? Catholics need to decide now if they want the real Apostolic Catholicism or a shallow, moralistic therapeutic-deism offered by modernist priests who claim “mercy and compassion” backs them up in their ridiculous theological conclusions which were obviously unprecedented before the 20th century.
Consider a young man named Triston in Houston, TX. I don’t think he is Catholic. But last year he put a shotgun into his mouth. Triston asked God to stop him if he wasn’t supposed to do it. The young man said he heard a long-silence with the gun in his face where nothing happened. He heard nothing. So, he took the silence as God’s approval (presumption) and pulled the trigger. Triston blew his face off. However, he lived through a long hospital stay. Despite his severe disfigurement, he is very thankful for his new life, even though he is now blind.
Clearly, God answered his prayer. You see, even if God did not stop his free-will actions, God gave Triston a second chance in life, as seen in the above-linked 7-minute video. Perhaps God gave Tristan another chance because he prayed, even if it was in a state of presumption. Why else would God have saved his life in such a disfigured state if he would not have otherwise gone to hell? Indeed, many secularists who see his face now say “It would have been better if he had not lived.” But we as traditional Catholics know better.
We’ve all been pushed to that edge of despair at one point or another in some dark spot in our lives. But when squishy priests give someone that theological “pass” to go over that edge because suicides “probably go to heaven,” many depressed people will take it. We’re talking about extremely dangerous stuff here from priests who have arrogantly placed themselves above the perennial dogma of the Catholic Church out of misplaced compassion for grieving families.
As I wrote at the beginning of this article, I have friends who have committed suicide, so I don’t like these conclusions. As a paramedic, I have come across suicides and they were always the most tragic of my calls. Even secular paramedics will admit that you can sense a dark spiritual reality when you enter the home of a suicide, even if they were only called to a “wellness-check” by emergency-dispatch before entering the home of the suicide. (Most calls to 911 are inaccurate because of the distress of the panicked caller, which is why we in EMS had to enter every scene ready for any number of patients, even situations not initially reported by emergency dispatch.)
And yes, I know the story modernist Catholics all tell ad nauseam at every Novus Ordo suicide-funeral about St. John Vianney’s parishioner who jumped off a bridge and apparently made it to Purgatory. But even if that Vianney account is true, that jumper was only saved because he had the time to accept the gift of perfect contrition before he hit the water.
The Church’s teaching is that dying in mortal sin with imperfect contrition (even with a desire to confess) still leads to hell. Only perfect contrition (sorrow for sin out of love for God, not fear) can save you if you have no access to the sacraments, and that gift doesn’t grow on trees. It definitely doesn’t grow on trees for people who commit suicide.
Do I think one in a thousand suicides (a number I’m admittedly fabricating) might be saved because of that gift of perfect contrition if they actually had time to fully repent between the act and reaching cardiac-arrest? Yes. But the Church from 33AD to 1965 was wise enough to refuse requiem Masses and Christian burial to suicides. This is because the Church never wanted her children to take a gamble of 1:1000 when it comes to salvation.
If you, or someone you love is thinking of harming yourself, please text or call the Suicide and Crisis hotline at 988. They are available 24-hours a day in English and Spanish.