The Moral Implications of Suicide

A Statement by the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America

The Episcopal Diocese of Newark has entered a growing national debate by proposing quite irresponsibly:

1- That self-killing (suicide) is a "moral choice" for the terminally ill, and for those living in persistent and/or progressive pain (i.e., with severely reduced "quality of life");
2- because "nowhere in the Bible does it say that there is a value to suffering simply for the sake of suffering;"
3- and that therefore we need to "redefine" what we mean by "life" (assumedly to provide a rationale for destroying what now should be held to have no value).

Quite obviously, suffering is not a good in itself. Yet it is not only a truth, but the central truth of Holy Scripture, that suffering can be and was accepted by the Son of God as the means of bringing about our redemption, the ultimate good for all mankind. Scripturally, life is identified as a good in itself. "Therefore choose life." To reject this good in order to eliminate suffering is a form of false compassion, for it encourages accepting an absolute evil (self-killing) in order to end a relative one (suffering) at great peril to one's soul.

Unquestionably there are cases, such as that of a person in severe and unremitting pain who seeks death to escape it, in which responsibility may well be mitigated by a resultant impairment of the ability to arrive at reasoned decisions. The problem in such cases is not to "redefine life," but to exercise discrimination and charity.

There are also cases, such as those of Christian martyrs, where death has been accepted willingly in order to avoid the greater evil of apostasy, but was neither sought nor chosen as a means to anything. These are not cases of suicide.

Suicide, the act of killing oneself as a deliberate choice deemed preferable to alternative courses, is always a grave offense (and an irreversible one) against the Lord of life from whom we have life as a gift. Neither the act itself, nor assisting and abetting it, can be morally justified.

The difficulty of judging those who have taken their life cuts two ways. People who have killed themselves cannot be judged absolutely without full knowledge of all the facts (including those involving the person's psyche), and are not (by those left behind) to be with finality condemned or despised. Moreover, it is the pastoral duty of the Church to minister supportively and with discernment to those who have been involved in acting to end a human life, often under severe and debilitating emotional distress, especially as they come to the beginnings of a realization of the enormity of what they have done. At the same time, it is an extreme and culpable dereliction of pastoral duty to presume to "reassure" those who are contemplating suicide that such a deed would carry no grave moral responsibility.

Adopted unanimously at the House of Bishops meeting on 14 February, 1996.

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