Sir, - With the increase in suicide deaths and the decriminalising of suicide in Ireland since 1993, people may wonder: "Is suicide a sin and what happens in the next life to those who kill themselves?"
When viewed objectively suicide is always, according to Catholic teaching, a gravely immoral act and forbidden by the fifth commandment. This is so because suicide is the killing of an innocent person and we are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us.
Also, according to Catholic doctrine, purgatory and hell exist but the Catholic Church has no knowledge of anyone being "in hell" and much less of any person being "sent there" but believes, in its veneration of the saints, that many people are in heaven. The Church gives the name purgatory to the final purification of all who die in God's grace and friendship but who have not, while they live, achieved the holiness necessary to enter heaven. Purgatory is therefore not a punishment but a purification and cannot be described in categories of time or place.
The Church does not condemn people who die by suicide but prays for them. Its fidelity to the truth about the value and dignity of human life also includes the pastoral care of families and friends devastated by a suicide death.
Pope John Paul II has said (Evangelium Vitae, par.18) that decisions that go against life sometimes arise from difficult or even tragic situations of profound suffering - loneliness, a total lack of economic prospects, depression and anxiety about the future. The Catechism of the Catholic Church also states that grave psychological disturbances, anguish or grave fear of hardship, suffering or torture can diminish the responsibility of one committing suicide. It goes on to say that by ways known to him alone God can provide the opportunity for repentance and that the Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.
On Thursday, October 1st, the Church celebrates the feast day of St Therese of Lisieux who correctly understood purgatory in terms of God's love and whose life was marked by an amount of suffering which was physical, spiritual and psychological. On that day Candlemas will hold a special Mass for suicide victims at 8 p.m. in St Patrick's Church, Inch, Killeagh.
The Mass will include a "Blessing of Roses" and people are asked to bring roses in memory of someone who has died by suicide. - Yours, etc., Rev Peter O'Callaghan,
Candlemas, Inch, Co Cork.