Suicide and the Preservation of Life

326. On the obligation itself. 1. Everyone is bound to preserve his own life, health, and integrity of members; and this precept is of itself grave, but as to health and integrity of members it admits smallness of matter.

a. The same precept which prohibits the killing of oneself by that very fact also commands the preservation of one's own life, since virtually it is the same thing not to preserve life and to take life from oneself.

b. Among natural goods entrusted to us by God, bodily life occupies the first place, since it is the foundation and condition of all other goods. But a good committed to us by God as to guardians we ought carefully to protect until He Himself demands it back.

c. From revelation we know that temporal life is the time of preparation in which we merit eternal life; the time of sowing for the day of harvest;¹ the time of working in the vineyard of the Lord;² the time of gathering interest from the talents committed to us by God;³ the time of storing up treasures in heaven;⁴ the time of running in the stadium to receive the prize and of contending in the contest to receive an incorruptible crown.⁵ By divine disposition this time obtains its end with death. From these things the supreme importance of the whole of life and of any particle of it shines forth.

2. Therefore everyone is bound to procure for himself those things which are necessary for preserving life and health: food, clothing, habitation; to ward off those things which harm life and health; and to restore impaired health by suitable means, namely physician and medicines.

Those sin who voluntarily do not procure for themselves food, clothing, and habitation necessary for the preservation of life and for other ends, even if this demands hard labor (66, 2).

3. We are indeed bound to preserve life and health by ordinary means, but not by extraordinary means; for he who is bound to the end is also bound to employ the ordinary means which are required for obtaining it, but not of himself also extraordinary means. Therefore not to employ ordinary means would be the same as to inflict death on oneself; but not to employ extraordinary means is the same as to permit death, which is sometimes licit. Which means are judged extraordinary must be judged by the common estimation of men.

a. Sick persons sin who in grave illness, where hope of recovery shines forth, do not wish to call a physician and employ the remedies prescribed to them,⁶ which by reason of their condition can easily be procured and employed. But those do not sin who in a dangerous disease do not wish to employ a remedy very costly by reason of their state and condition, or a remedy very difficult on account of great pains. Therefore no one, not even the richest, is bound of himself to call the most skilled physicians to drive away a grave disease, nor is anyone bound of himself to leave his domicile and seek healthier air elsewhere, because all these things are extraordinary.

b. From this same reason it must be said that there does not exist an obligation of undergoing a grave surgical operation or a notable amputation. For although today the pains of many operations, on account of numbed senses, are not sharp, nevertheless the obligation is not to be imposed, both because most people greatly dread it, and because the success, especially lasting success, is ordinarily uncertain, and finally because it is a grave inconvenience to lead life with a mutilated body.⁷ That no one of himself is obligated to undergo a grave surgical operation which he vehemently dreads, because this very dread is an extraordinary difficulty, is suitably confirmed from this, that St. Alphonsus (n. 372), following several authors, judges that a virgin is not bound to suffer an operation by the hands of a surgeon, even if life cannot otherwise be preserved, when on account of modesty she dreads this handling more than death itself. Accidentally, however, someone can be obligated to undergo an operation or amputation, namely where the matter concerns a person very necessary to the family or to the public good and the success is morally certain.

c. Those do not sin who for a reasonable cause do not wish to employ a remedy against a light illness, because light care in recovering health can be neglected from a just cause, just as a light shortening of life admitted from a reasonable cause is licit.

d. A monk bound by rule to perpetual abstinence from meats does not sin if in grave illness he refuses to eat meats by which he could preserve life; for it is licit to omit the preservation of life for obtaining a great good. But it conduces to a great common good of the order that the rule of abstinence be strictly observed even with danger to life.

Whether a superior can command a grave surgical operation. If the sick person is necessary for the good of others and the success of the operation is morally certain, a superior, father or superior, can obligate a son or subject to undergoing an operation whose pains are not very sharp. But if some one of these conditions is lacking, the superior does not seem able to command so arduous a matter.⁸

Note. Concerning drunkenness and concerning the influence of drunkenness on health and the life of the body, cf. De principiis, n. 344.

¹ Matt. 13:24 ss.

² Matt. 20:1.

³ Matt. 25:14 ss.

⁴ Matt. 6:20.

⁵ 1 Cor. 9:24-25.

⁶ Cf. Ecclus. 38:1, 4.

⁷ Cf. Capellmann, Medicina pastor., p. 23 s.

⁸ Cf. Sanchez, Consilia mor., l. 5, c. 1, dub. 34, n. 6; Lugo, De iustitia, disp. 10, n. 33; St. Alphonsus, n. 370.

Morphia may be given to ease pain, and brandy to strengthen a sick person, even though they cause loss of reason. This follows from what has been said and from the principle of a double effect. It is not lawful to administer such medicines in order to deprive a dying man of the use of reason, so that he may die while unconscious. The time just before death is very precious; a sinner may then be reconciled with God and save his soul; one who is in the state of grace may very much increase his merit by a good use of that time. Euthanasia then, in this sense, is unlawful; it is virtually shortening a man’s life.

SUICIDE, or the killing of one’s self, when one’s own death is the direct and immediate object of the will, is forbidden by the Fifth Commandment and is grievously sinful. It is the same when death is not the direct object of the will, if some act is done of which the only immediate effect is the destruction of one’s own life; for in that case by willing the action I implicitly will the effect. And so if, out of bravado, I jumped from the top of the tower of Westminster Cathedral into the street below, I should be guilty of the grave sin of suicide, even though that was not my direct object.

The reason why suicide is unlawful is because we have not the free disposal of our own lives. God is the-author of life and death, and he has reserved the ownership of human life to himself. We cannot leave the post where he has stationed us without his authority, Moreover, a man belongs to his country, and so suicide is a crime against the commonwealth, and as such is punished. There is a controversy among divines as to whether it would be lawful for a malefactor who had been condemned to death and entrusted by public authority with the execution of the sentence against himself to take his own life. Many hold that it would be lawful, for there seems no conclusive reason why the State might not appoint a man to be his own executioner.

It is not unlawful to do something which will cause one’s own death provided that the action has some other immediate and good effect of great importance, which counterbalances the loss of human life, and this is not intended. This is merely an application of the principle of a double effect which was explained in the Book on Human Acts. The captain of a man-of-war, for example, which in time of war is in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy, might blow up the ship in order to prevent so great a disaster befalling his country, although the act would cause his own death and that of others in the ship. He does not intend the destruction of human life; the immediate effect of his action is to prevent the ship falling into the enemy’s hands. The public advantage counterbalances the loss.

Similarly, for good reason I may undertake dangerous work, go to unhealthy climates, or lead a kind of life which will lessen the number of years that I shall live. Somebody must do such things; they are useful to the community or to myself, and I do not intend the shortening of my life. It would be wrong to expose my life to probable danger merely for the sake of getting money or notoriety; such reasons do not justify us in seriously risking human life.

As we have not the ownership of life, so neither are we the owners of our limbs so as to be able to dispose of them at will. A man is not justified in mutilating himself in order to avoid military conscription, or to excite commiseration, or to gain money. The amputation of a limb is permissible when such an operation is necessary in order to preserve life; for we may sacrifice a part for the safety of the whole.

We are obliged to take ordinary means to preserve our lives, for to do otherwise would be virtually to commit suicide. There is no obligation to take extraordinary, unusual, or very painful or expensive means to preserve our lives. And so one in feeble health, who will probably die if he spends the winter in England, is not bound to expatriate himself and go and live in a milder climate. Nor am I bound to undergo a painful and costly operation in order to save my life; I may if I like choose rather to die, unless my life is of great importance for the common good, for then the public good must be considered first. Except in such a case as this, a superior could not oblige a subject to undergo a very painful operation or to submit to the amputation of a leg; obedience to human authority does not seem to extend to such matters as these.

The sins against charity toward self are:

I. Direct killing of oneself. This occurs when the self-killing act, as such, either is intended as an end or is assumed as a means by which another end is obtained.

1. Direct killing of oneself is always prohibited under grave sin. For first, an act of this sort is against natural inclination, "because naturally every thing loves itself; and to this it belongs that every thing naturally preserves itself in being, and resists corrupting things as much as it can" (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 64, a. 5). Then self-killing "is against charity, by which each one ought to love himself" (St. Thomas, ibid.). Then the killer "does injury to the community" (St. Thomas, ibid.), because each one, as part of the community, is ordered also to the good of the community. Moreover, it is illicit to destroy what is not yours, but God's alone; and such is life. Hence Sacred Scripture: "You shall not kill";¹ "I will kill and I will make to live";² "You are Lord, who have power of life and death."³

It is indeed reported that some Saints killed themselves; but these things can be explained either through the inspiration of God, who, as Lord of life and death, permitted it, or through good faith (cf. St. Thomas, II-II, q. 64, a. 5; St. Alphonsus, III, 366, 361).

2. It is disputed whether the killing of oneself, by which certainly one sins against charity toward self, also involves a sin against commutative justice; not indeed with respect to oneself - for justice and injustice are toward another - but with respect either to the community or to God, or to both. St. Alphonsus leaves the matter undecided (III, 366); St. Thomas indeed states: "It must be said that homicide is a sin, not only because it is contrary to justice, but also because it is contrary to charity, which one ought to have toward oneself: and on this side killing oneself is a sin by comparison with oneself; but by comparison with the community and with God, it has the character of sin also by opposition to justice" (II-II, q. 64, a. 5); but the holy Doctor can be understood of social or general justice, and perhaps he did not intend a sin distinct in species.

Question. Whether it is lawful for one condemned to death, by command or by positive permission of legitimate authority, to kill himself.

Response. More commonly it is denied, because punishment is an act of vindicative justice, which is essentially toward another. Yet St. Alphonsus (III, 369) and others hold it as quite probable that this is lawful, because nothing prevents the condemned man from acting as two persons, namely as the one executing the sentence and as the punished one. Therefore they hold as probable that vindicative justice is not essentially toward a physically different person. Hence practically it is lawful. Yet there is no obligation of satisfying a precept of this sort - and consequently the guilty person cannot be compelled to such an act - because the judge probably cannot impose it, and it is a matter that is arduous (n. 146). "Yet they commonly concede that the guilty person can climb the ladder, fit his neck to the sword, etc.; since these actions tend only remotely toward death" (St. Alphonsus, ibid.).

¹ Exodus 20:13.

² Deuteronomy 32:39.

³ Wisdom 16:13.

II. Omission of self-preservation - for example by abstaining from food or drink until you die - seems altogether illicit, namely as it is exercised practically. For it is altogether illicit to intend death as a means of obtaining something (n. 523). But he who abstains from food or drink intends, as that manner of acting practically obtains, death as a means of obtaining something. It must be said otherwise of one who abstains from food or drink so that another may have that by which he can escape death, because he intends the preservation of another's life, but merely permits his own death. Likewise it seems lawful to abstain from food and drink for a time for the end that you may be freed from prison, provided there is hope of fruit. For diminution of health and strength - equally as mutilation - is lawful if it is ordered to the good or better condition of the whole (n. 526). But this seems to have place in the proposed hypothesis, because it is better to live freely and weakly than in prison.

Question 1. Whether one condemned to perish by hunger can refuse food secretly offered.

Response. It seems one must answer affirmatively, because to one condemned to perish by hunger there seems to have been granted permission to abstain from offered food; which permission, according to the things explained above, is quite probably valid.

Question 2. Whether it is lawful to wish death for oneself.

Response 1. Affirmatively, provided however it is done with due resignation: 1. if death is wished from desire of possessing God or of no longer offending Him. Hence St. Paul: "Who will deliver me from the body of death?";¹ 2. if life seems more bitter than death to someone, according to that saying: "Death is better than a bitter life"² (St. Alphonsus, II, 30, 2).

Response 2. Negatively, if someone wishes death for himself from anger or for a slight reason, for example on account of small troubles.

¹ Romans 7:24.

² Ecclesiasticus 30:17.

III. Indirect killing of oneself occurs when the self-killing act, as such, is neither chosen as an end nor assumed as a means by which another end is obtained. Now indirect killing of oneself is of itself illicit; it becomes lawful if a proportionate cause is present. The former is clear from the fact that charity toward self of itself demands that I guard life at least by ordinary means, much less does it permit that I neglect it (n. 521). The latter is deduced from what has been said about an act with a double effect, one good, the other evil.

Corollary I. They sin gravely: 1. who by living intemperately notably accelerate death; 2. unskilled tightrope walkers, acrobats, and other performers who, induced by greed for profit alone or by empty glory, expose themselves to grave danger of life; the skilled do not expose themselves to such great danger and are more easily excused; this also holds concerning skilled persons who undertake courses by means of a flying machine.

Corollary II. They do not sin: 1. who, with danger of death but with hope of fruit, preach the Gospel, or with hope of usefulness in time of persecution do not flee; yet those things seem illicit on account of the sole desire of martyrdom. Likewise they do not sin who by vigils, fasts, etc., shorten life even by some years, or from a just cause undertake unhealthy labors or seek a region very harmful to health, even if it is foreseen that life must be lessened by some years; 2. who in a shipwreck yields a plank, even one already grasped, to another, with his own death even certainly permitted, or throws himself before a missile or blow to save the life of a ruler or friend, or takes the place of a friend unjustly condemned to death; nor is it illicit to throw oneself from a ship into the sea, lest all perish; 3. who ignites gunpowder to overturn an enemy fortification, or sinks a ship lest the enemy gain possession of it, even if he foresees that he himself will perish at the same time; yet the latter is illicit if it is done solely for preserving honor, although there are many prejudices which more easily excuse; 4. who, to avoid a more bitter death actually to be undergone or inflicted, casts himself into the danger, even certain danger, of a less bitter death, "for example, if someone throws himself through a window to escape a fire; especially if there is some hope of escaping death.... And Elbel permits this also to guilty persons detained in prison, for escaping a certain sentence of death, or even perpetual prison" (St. Alphonsus, III, 366, 367, 370-372). Likewise it is lawful for a virgin "to cast herself into certain danger of life, but not into certain death, for preserving chastity from an assailant" (St. Alphonsus, III, 372, question 2). For the rest, in the cases set forth, commonly either there is some hope of safety, or time for serious thought is lacking, and subjectively they are excused at least on account of a good intention.

Corollary III. Bullfights are not prohibited under grave sin; since, with attention to the skill of the fighters, grave danger is commonly absent. Yet they are prohibited under light sin, because, considering the nature of the act and a danger not altogether to be despised, there seems to be lacking a sufficient cause for conducting them. Horse and bicycle races are lawful, even though they are not without any danger.

V. Ecclesiastical penalties established for suicide and self-mutilation are:

1. Those who have mutilated themselves or others, or have attempted to take life from themselves, are irregular from delict (can. 985, 5).

2. Those who have killed themselves by deliberate counsel are deprived of ecclesiastical burial (can. 1240, § 1, 3); to one excluded from ecclesiastical burial there must also be denied both any funeral Mass, even anniversary Mass, and other public funeral offices (can. 1241).

3. Those who have laid hands on themselves, if death has not followed, are to be barred from legitimate ecclesiastical acts, and if they are clerics, they are to be suspended for a time to be determined by the Ordinary, and removed from benefices or offices having care of souls annexed in the internal or external forum (can. 2350, § 2).

4. A lay person who has been lawfully condemned for the delict of grave mutilation or wounding or violence is to be considered excluded by the law itself from legitimate ecclesiastical acts and from any office, if he has any in the Church, with the obligation of repairing damages remaining firm (can. 2354, § 1).

I. Direct killing of an innocent person is a grave sin from its whole genus. This is clear both from Sacred Scripture,¹ and from the fact that the murderer: 1. destroys what is not his, but God's; 2. deprives his neighbor of the use of life and of the faculties, to which the neighbor has a right from divine ordination; 3. cuts off a member of the commonwealth (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 64, a. 6; St. Alphonsus, III, 393).

Corollary I. It is illicit to kill those lethally wounded, the dying, so that they may not suffer longer, and so forth.

Corollary II. Puncture of the heart or artery is illicit when done for this end, that one who seems to be dead may certainly be deprived of life, lest, namely, he be buried alive (euthanasia). But if it is certainly established that life has passed away, it is indeed per se lawful for a physician to puncture the heart or artery; yet since by acting thus a practice to be disapproved is promoted, that manner of acting is illicit unless both the physician signifies that he does not approve the wicked intention of those requesting it, and a grave cause is present.

II. Nor is it ever lawful for public authority directly to kill an innocent person; both because public authority does not have a right over the life of innocent subjects, and because the common good itself, for which public authority must provide, is promoted above all by the protection of the life of the innocent.

"The killing of a sinner," says St. Thomas, "becomes lawful, namely for public authority, by comparison to something else: considering man indeed according to himself, it is lawful to kill no one, because in any man, even a sinner, we ought to love the nature which God made, and which is corrupted by killing; but, as was said above (art. 2 of this question), the killing of a sinner is by comparison to the common good, which is corrupted by sin; but the life of the just is preservative and promotive of the common good, because they are the more principal part of the multitude; and therefore in no way is it lawful to kill an innocent person" (II-II, q. 64, a. 6; St. Alphonsus, loc. cit.).

Hence neither "is it lawful to kill hostages, even if those who sent them do not keep faith, because they are innocent" (St. Alphonsus, loc. cit.); nor can an innocent person be killed even if, for example, a tyrant besieging a city threatens that, unless he is killed, he will overturn the city. Nevertheless an innocent subject, when the besieging tyrant demands it, can be sent and handed over to the enemies, especially because the innocent person, if he is not a stranger, seems bound to expose his life for his own commonwealth (St. Alphonsus, III, 393).

Corollary. The killing of an innocent person can become lawful by the authority of God. "For God has dominion of death and life: by His ordination both sinners and the just die; and therefore he who kills an innocent person by the command of God does not sin in such a case, just as neither does God, whose executor he is; and he is shown to fear God, obeying His commands" (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 64, a. 6, ad 1).

III. Indirect killing of an innocent person likewise is per se illicit; it becomes lawful if a proportionate cause is present. It is said:

1. Indirect killing of one's neighbor is per se illicit, because charity per se demands that I avert damage from my neighbor, much less does it permit that I create it for him.

2. It becomes lawful if a proportionate cause is present; this follows from what was said about an act with a double effect (St. Alphonsus, III, 393).

Corollary I. Homicide is not imputed if someone places a work, even an illicit one, that is little dangerous, so that death rarely comes from it, provided, if it can be done, due diligence is used for forestalling death; as if someone rings a bell, and by chance the little bell, falling, crushes a traveler; if someone, giving attention to hunting wild beasts, by chance kills a man; if someone fornicates, and the woman dies from childbirth (St. Alphonsus, III, 398).

Corollary II. "For taking a city and winning victory, if it is necessary, it is lawful to direct cannons at that place where there are many innocent persons, because their death follows outside the intention" (St. Alphonsus, III, 393); in other words, because the aforesaid act is not assumed as a means insofar as it is killing of an innocent person.

¹ Gen. 4:10; Exod. 20:13.

The mere presence, however, of condemned matter in a writing does not cause it to fall under prohibition.

(a) Some works are not forbidden unless the author’s purpose to teach error or attack the truth is known. Hence, books on religion written by non-Catholics which contain errors against the Catholic Faith are not forbidden, unless they deal with religion ex professo (i.e., not incidentally or cursorily, but clearly for the purpose of teaching). It is not necessary, however, that religion be the main theme of the book, Similarly, books that attack religion are forbidden, not when attacks are casual or by the way, but when they are made purposely; and the same is true as regards books that insult the clerical state. The purpose is recognized from the declaration of the author, from the nature of the work, from the systematic treatment, length or frequency of argumentation or attack, etc.

(b) Other works are not forbidden, unless they contain not only agreement with error, but also argument in defense of error. Thus, books in favor of heresy, schism, suicide, duelling, divorce, Freemasonry, etc., are forbidden when they champion wrong causes by disputing in their behalf.

(c) Other works are forbidden, not because they state, but because they approve of error. Such are books that attack or ridicule the foundations of religion or the dogmas of faith, those that disparage worship, those that are subversive of discipline, those that defend proscribed propositions, those that teach and favor superstition, etc.

Suicide.—Suicide, or the killing of oneself, is, like homicide in general, of various kinds.

(a) Thus, in reference to the intention, it is voluntary or involuntary, according as it proceeds from knowledge and choice, or as it is committed without realization of what is done or without the intention to produce death. Examples of involuntary suicide are a person who is temporarily insane on account of impending calamity and drowns himself, and a person who, attempting to frighten another by pretending to hang himself, actually strangles to death. It would be a mistake to say that no person who commits suicide is free, but no doubt a large percentage of those who kill themselves are not responsible for their act.

(b) In reference to the mode, suicide is direct, if that which is done tends from its nature to the death of the person who does it (e.g., firing a pistol into one’s brain); it is indirect, if that which is done tends from its nature to another end (e.g., to struggle with a criminal who is firing a revolver). Direct suicide is committed in many ways, all of which can be reduced to positive (e.g., the eating or drinking of deadly poison) and negative (e.g., the refusal to eat or drink anything).

Sinfulness of Suicide.—Voluntary and direct suicide is always a most grave sin, if committed without due authority (i.e., the command of God).

(a) It is a grave injury against the rights of God, for it usurps His authority, refuses Him the service He desires, spurns the gift He has bestowed, dishonors the image of God (Gen., ix. 6), and destroys the property of God: “Thou, O Lord, hast the power of life and death” (Wis., xvi. 13).

(b) It is an offense against society, for the community has a right to be benefited by the lives of its members, and to receive a return for the protection and assistance it affords them. Moreover, death by suicide is usually felt as a great sorrow and disgrace by the relatives of the departed, and it has a demoralizing effect on many persons of suggestible minds. The fact that the death of this or that man is not felt as a loss by a family or the State, but rather as a relief, is no argument; for if suicide were left to human decision, how many fatal mistakes would be made (see 460)! Persons valuable to society would rashly kill themselves, fearing in a mood of depression that they were worthless; others who could contribute nothing in material ways would destroy themselves and deprive their fellow-men of an example of fortitude, or at least of the opportunity of showing charity and mercy to the needy.

(c) Direct and voluntary suicide is a sin against the deepest natural inclination, for self-preservation is called the first law of nature (see 298), and also against that love of self which charity requires (see 1136 sqq.). Since charity to self is more obligatory than charity to the neighbor, suicide is a more serious sin than other forms of homicide. Nor is it excused by the desire of some good for self. The suicide does not better himself by his act, for, since he has not fulfilled his trust in this life, what can he expect in the next life? He escapes the lesser evils of physical miseries or moral temptations, but he incurs the greater evils of physical death and of moral cowardice and defeat, to say nothing of his punishment in the hereafter.

Cooperation in Suicide.—Cooperation in suicide has the guilt of unlawful homicide. (a) Thus, those who incite, advise, command, or assist another to commit suicide are guilty of moral murder. (b) Those who carry out together a suicide pact are guilty both of suicide and of moral murder.

Permission or Authorization to Commit Suicide.—(a) Divine authority could command or permit suicide, since God has the power over life and death. But whether God has ever done this is uncertain. Some argue for the affirmative from the death of Sampson, who pulled down the house upon himself saying: “Let me die with the Philistines” (Judges, xvi. 30), and of Razias who killed himself to escape ill-usage (II Mach., xiv. 37 sqq.), and from the acts of certain female martyrs who from love of God or from the desire to preserve chastity rushed to their deaths. But others think that invincible ignorance may explain these cases. The act of Sampson may also be understood as indirect suicide lawfully committed for the public good of his country.

(b) Human authority, according to some authors, could authorize a condemned malefactor really guilty of a capital crime to execute himself; for, they argue, there is little difference between opening one’s mouth to swallow poison administered by an executioner and taking it with one’s own hands, as was done by Socrates. Others deny that God has given the State the authority to order suicide, and they declare that it is both unnecessary and inhuman to force a condemned man to be his own executioner. Still others believe that the State could command self-execution, at least in necessity, but that such a punishment is so strange, cruel and unnatural that it should be avoided; for, if it is shocking to ask a father to execute his child, much more shocking would it be to ask a man to kill himself. The argument is inconclusive which says that because it is lawful to perform an act preparatory for death, but which is indifferent and would never cause death (such as opening the mouth for poison), it is also lawful to perform the act which inflicts death (such as taking the poison).

Indirect Suicide.—Indirect suicide is committed when one is the cause of an act or omission, indifferent in itself, but from which one foresees as a result that one’s life will be lost or notably shortened, This kind of “suicide” is lawful when and if the conditions for a case of double effect are present—in other words, if there is a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect (see 103 sqq.). The following reasons are considered sufficient:

(a) the public good, for the welfare of society is a greater good than the life of an individual. Eleazar is praised because he exposed himself to death in order to deliver his people (I Mach., vi. 43 sqq.). It is not sinful, then, but rather obligatory for a soldier to advance against the enemy or to blow up an enemy fortification, though it be certain that his own death will result; nor is it wrong for a pastor to go about ministering to his flock during a pestilence, though it be certain that he will fall a victim to the plague. Explorers and experimenters may also risk their lives for the advancement of science;

(b) the good of another suffices for indirect suicide, when he is in extreme spiritual need. Indeed, there may be an obligation of charity to risk one’s life for the salvation of a soul (see 1166). Hence, it is lawful to go as a missionary to a country whose climate is so trying that strangers die there after a few years;

(c) the higher good of self (i.e., the good of virtue) justifies indirect suicide, when there is an urgent reason for exercising a virtue in spite of the peril of death. Thus, for the sake of charity a shipwrecked passenger may yield his place in the life-boat to his parent, wife, friend, or neighbor; for the sake of faith, one may refuse to flee in time of persecution (see 1006), or may refuse and should refuse to take food or drink offered as a mark of idolatry; for the sake of chastity a virgin, at the peril of her life, may jump from a high window or resist the assailant, although it does not seem that this is obligatory if no internal consent will be given to the rape; for the sake of justice, a criminal in the death house who has an opportunity to escape from prison, may decide to remain and be executed, or a malefactor condemned to die by starvation may refuse to take food secretly brought him; for the sake of mortification, one may practise moderate austerities, as by fastings, watchings, scourgings, hair-shirts, etc., which sometimes shorten life, though generally they lengthen it;

(d) the preferable temporal good of self suffices, that is, one may risk the danger of death to escape another danger that is more likely to happen or more terrible. Thus, a man in a burning building may leap from a high window, even though death from the fall is almost certain, for death by burning is more terrible; a prisoner who is about to be tortured to death may make a break for liberty if he sees a chance of escape, for death is more certain if he remains. On the same principle, one may engage in hazardous but useful occupations, such as working on high buildings, or as a diver or miner, for it is better to live a shorter time with employment and the necessities of life, and to be of service to the public, than to live a longer time without these advantages. But a worker should not undertake dangerous tasks for which he is unfitted or unprepared, and the employer is bound to safeguard the lives of the workers.

The same reasons are not sufficient in all cases. (a) Thus, the greater the risk of death, the more serious the reason required. Hence, to save the money one has it might be lawful to jump from a second-story window, but not from a higher window when the fall would most likely kill one. (b) The more immediate the danger of death, the more serious the reason required. Thus, to save money one might lawfully enter a quarantined house, but the risk would not be permitted if the house were tottering in an earthquake. (c) The more notable the shortening of life, the greater the reason needed to permit it. Thus, if the practice of a certain mortification or labor reduces the expectancy of life for a few years, a lesser reason suffices than if it reduces the expectancy for ten or more years.

Indirect suicide is unlawful and has the guilt of self-murder when the reason for risking death is frivolous or insufficient or sinful.

(a) Examples of insufficient reasons are found in the cases of persons who engage in occupations or actions that are very dangerous to life or limb but of little public or private value, as when for the sake of performing a feat a man walks a tight-rope, pricks himself with pins and needles, or puts his head into a lion’s mouth. But if the performer is very skillful and has no other means of livelihood, it seems that he may exercise his art for the sake of entertainment.

(b) Examples of sinful reasons for risking death are found in persons who abbreviate their lives by over-eating, drunkenness, habitual indulgence in strong spirits, or immoderate passion of any kind; and also in those who refuse to make use of the ordinary means for the preservation of health (see 1566 sqq.) or of the ordinary remedies against disease (see 1571). It is not necessary that one be anxious to live long (see 1063), but it is obligatory to use the normal means for the preservation of life, and those who notably neglect these means are guilty of indirect suicide.

Is it suicidal to refuse a surgical operation pronounced necessary for life?

(a) If the operation is likely to be successful and there is no good reason for refusing it, it seems that one may not refuse it without the guilt of indirect suicide, although one might be excused on account of good faith.

(b) If the success of the operation is doubtful, or if there is a good reason for refusing, one who refuses is not guilty of suicide. Among the good reasons are spiritual ones (e.g., modesty, the fear of falling into blasphemy or despair under the pain are given by some writers) and temporal ones (e.g., the poverty that would be brought upon the patient’s family or the hardship that would result for the patient himself).

Canonical Penalties for Suicide.—(a) Those who attempt suicide are irregular ex delicto (Canon 985, n. 5). (b) If they die, they are not given ecclesiastical burial unless they gave signs of repentance before death (Canon 1240, n, 3), and, if they recover, they are subject to various penalties (Canon 2350, Sec. 2). (c) If it is doubtful whether a person committed suicide, or was responsible, the doubt is decided in his favor, provided no scandal is likely.

Licit Use of Narcotics.—There are a great many substances that produce the same effects on mind and body as intoxicating liquors, namely, the narcotic poisons, such as morphine, opium, chloroform, ether, or laughing gas. To them then will apply the principles given above in reference to strong drink. Thus, it would be a serious sin to make oneself insensible by using morphine, if there were no just reason; but it is lawful to take ether for an operation, gas when having a tooth pulled, morphine when it is ordered by a physician to relieve pain, etc. In his address of Feb. 24, 1957 to a symposium of the Italian Society of Anaesthesiology (The Pope Speaks, Summer, 1957, pp. 33 ff.) Pope Pius XII considered some special aspects of the use of drugs in the practice of analgesis. Among the questions submitted to him for consideration were the following:

1. Is there a general moral obligation to refuse analgesis and to accept physical pain in a spirit of faith? After indicating that in certain cases the acceptance of physical suffering is a matter of serious obligation, the Pope responded that there was no conflict with the spirit of faith to avoid pain by the use of narcotics. Pain can and does prevent the achievement of higher goods and interests and may licitly be avoided; obviously, too, the pain may be willingly accepted in fulfillment of the Christian duty of renunciation and of interior purification.

2. Is it lawful for the dying or the sick who are in danger of death to make use of narcotics when there are medical reasons for their use? The Pope responded; “Yes—provided that no other means exist, and if, in the given circumstances, that action does not prevent the carrying out of other moral and religious duties.” The duties referred to include settling important business, making a will, or going to confession. (Should a dying man refuse first to attend to these duties and persist in asking for narcotics, the doctor can administer the drugs without rendering himself guilty of formal co-operation in the fault committed, which results, not from the narcotics but from the immoral will of the patient.) Among the conditions and circumstances laid down for the licit use of narcotics in the case in question are the following: “if the dying person has received the last Sacraments, if medical reasons clearly suggest the use of anaesthesia, if in delivering the dose the permitted amount is not exceeded, if the intensity and duration of the treatment is carefully reckoned, and finally, if the patient consents to it, then there is no objection, the use of anaesthesia is morally permissible.”

3. Can narcotics be used even if the lessening of pain probably be accompanied by a shortening of life? The Pope responded that “every form of direct euthanasia, that is, the administration of a narcotic in order to produce or hasten death, is unlawful because in that case one presumes to dispose directly of life ... If between the narcotics and the shortening of life there exists no direct causal link, imposed either by the intention of the interested parties or by the nature of things (as would be the case if the suppression of the pain could be attained only by the shortening of life), and if, on the contrary, the administration of narcotics produces two distinct effects, one, the relief of pain and the other the shortening of life, then the action is lawful. However it must be determined whether there is a reasonable proportion between these two effects and whether the advantages of the one effect compensate for the disadvantages of the other. It is important also to ask oneself whether the present state of science does not make it possible for the same result to be obtained by other means. Finally, in the use of the narcotics, one should not go beyond the limits which are actually necessary.”

What is the order of the precepts among themselves? - "After the three precepts pertaining to religion, by which the debt is rendered to God, and after the fourth precept, which belongs to piety, by which the debt is rendered to parents, in which is included every debt which by some special reason is owed, it was necessary that consequently some precepts be placed pertaining to justice properly so called, which renders the debt indifferently to all." S. Th. 2. 2, q. 122, a. 6.

Therefore the six precepts of the Decalogue which follow, as the same Angelic Doctor teaches, l. c. a. 1, are "about the acts of justice commonly so called, which is considered between equals." In these six precepts are prohibited homicide, adultery, theft, and false testimony. "But all other harms which are inflicted on neighbors can be reduced to these, which are prohibited by these precepts, as to certain more common and principal things. For all harms which are inflicted on the person of a neighbor are understood to be prohibited in homicide, as in the more principal thing. But those which are inflicted on a connected person, and especially by way of lust, are understood to be prohibited together with adultery. Those, however, which pertain to damages inflicted in things, are understood to be prohibited together with theft. But those which pertain to speech, such as detractions, blasphemies, and any such things, are understood to be prohibited in false testimony, which is more directly contrary to justice." S. Th. l. c. a. 6 ad 2.

What is the fifth precept of the Decalogue? - The fifth precept is: You shall not kill, Ex. 20:13. Now this fifth precept, insofar as it is negative, primarily indeed prohibits homicide, that is, the unjust killing of a man; secondarily, however, and consequently, unjust anger, or the inordinate appetite of vengeance, Matth. 5:21, 22, and every other unjust injury, wounding, or mutilation of the body, whether one's own or another's, which is reduced to homicide as the principal bodily injury. But insofar as it is virtually positive, it commands the conservation of life. Those things, however, which will be established here concerning killing, whether lawful or unlawful, will be applied, with due proportion preserved, to mutilation or any injury of the body.

Struggl 3, 5; L. 363.

Is suicide lawful? Without divine authority it is wicked directly to kill oneself. Someone is said directly to kill himself or another when truly, per se and directly, by doing something, he intends to take life from himself or another; but indirectly, when he does not positively intend this, yet voluntarily does something from which he foresees the death of himself or another will follow. Proof: For 1. this is openly prohibited by Sacred Scripture, Ex. 20:13; Deut. 52:39; Wis. 16:13. 2. It is contrary to charity toward oneself, and is injurious both to God, who alone is the direct and absolute master of human life, and to society and the commonwealth, which is unjustly deprived through suicide of its part or citizen. S. Th. 2. 2, q. 64, a. 5. Hence suicide is deservedly punished by both laws. For by Common Civil Law both suicides and those who attempt this crime, even if death has not followed, are punished with the penalty of infamy. By ecclesiastical law, however, suicides are deprived of sacred burial and the suffrages of the Church, as is established in C. 12, c. 23, q. 4, and as may be seen in the Roman Ritual; this penalty nevertheless does not include those who, by madness, insanity, or imagination disturbed through most grave sadness of soul, have taken life from themselves, or those who repented of the crime before death. Struggl 7; Ithur. Cas. 40, n. 3 seqq.; L. 366, 375.

You will resolve: It is not lawful for a virgin directly to kill herself even to preserve chastity, which is esteemed a very great good. Nor is it lawful to kill oneself, although the least space of life remains. Struggl 8; Ithur. l. c.; S. Th. 2. 2, q. 64, a. 5 ad 3, 5; L. 366.

Is it lawful by a positive act to concur in one's own death? Never, without divine authority, is it lawful to posit an external act tending per se immediately to one's own destruction, unless that act has another good and immediate effect, which alone is intended, and a grave reason urges the obtaining of that good effect. The reason is that, where the physical act, even though per se indifferent, has no other effect than suicide, it already becomes evil, since no reason is present by which the precept of conserving life and of avoiding the danger of death ceases, and the killing of oneself would be directly intended, at least implicitly. Hence in whatever case it is prohibited. S. Th. 2. 2, q. 64, a. 5 ad 4; L. 366. Cf. here 717.

You will resolve: It is wicked to throw oneself into a river, with certain danger of death, in order to baptize a child. For this would be directly to take life from oneself; namely because first one posits a means which directly and immediately tends to the killing of oneself, so that afterward, once that is posited, he may be able to administer baptism. Likewise it is wicked to do or omit something with the design that death be accelerated. But it is lawful to serve those infected with plague, to go to dangerous places of missions, and to undertake a dangerous journey from a grave and proportionate cause, as Christopher Columbus and others did. L. 366.

Is mutilation of oneself lawful? It is not lawful to mutilate oneself, or even to mutilate another, unless this is necessary for the conservation of the whole body, and with the consent of him whose member it is, or of him "to whom it pertains to care for the safety of him who has a member corruptive" of the other members. S. Th. 2. 2, q. 65, a. 1. But otherwise to mutilate someone in a member is altogether unlawful; and this even if it is done to preserve chastity and avoid temptations. The reason is that God is the absolute and direct master of human life; but man has only useful or indirect dominion over his own body. Unless this is necessary for the conservation of the whole body; for since the part is ordered to preserving the whole body, under the pressure of such necessity, some member certainly can be cut off, for example, to cut off for oneself a hand bound by a chain in order to avoid death impending from a beast, or a tyrant, or fire. S. Th. 2. 2, q. 64, a. 2; q. 65, a. 1; Lugo de Iust. d. 10, n. 22; La-Croix 786. Even if it is done, etc., because this remedy is neither absolutely necessary, nor in fact does it exempt from carnal temptations, although someone becomes impotent for generating. S. Th. 2. 2, q. 65, a. 1. Hence, a fortiori, it is more probably not lawful to castrate boys in order to preserve the voice in them, L. 374. "And indeed the reason is most valid... For man is not so the master of the members of his body that he is able to assent to the cutting off of any one of them, except if the safety and conservation of the whole body cannot otherwise be obtained." Benedict XIV, de Syn. l. 11, c. 7, n. 4; Lugo d. 10, n. 23; S. Th. l. c. The discipline of the Church, moreover, brands with the mark of irregularity a eunuch who, outside the necessity of saving life, has given assent to his own mutilation. Benedict XIV, l. c. n. 5. 1. Nor indeed is it lawful for someone to cut off his own fingers in order to avoid military service. Struggl 9, 10; L. l. 7, nn. 416-418.

714bis. Note: The Porro operation, so called from the Italian physician Porro, consists in the extraction of the uterus with the ovaries and other annexed parts. It is a true mutilation and utero-ovarian castration of the woman. Therefore it is not lawful unless for the conservation of one's own life. Just as mutilation and castration, whether in a man or in a woman, is unlawful, so also unlawful is atrophization or cutting of the canals conducting spermatozoa "or nemaspermata in a man." This atrophization or cutting is equivalently a grave mutilation, and a grave sin, unless it is done to save life itself. Nor indeed can public authority introduce this vasectomy, as it is called, lest degenerate men be procreated from degenerate parents, whether as the punishment of some crime, or as a necessary means because of the common good. For the power of procreating offspring pertains to personal dignity itself, and to the species, or to the propagation of the human race, over which public authority has no power. Nor can it be a punishment of crime, since it would render them still more criminal and unbridled in lust, and against the order of nature; nor can it of itself be a necessary and useful means because of the common good, for which wholly other, quite different means are necessary and useful, especially moral ones.

What is the obligation of conserving life? - Each one, from charity toward himself and from justice toward God and toward society, is bound to ordinary means for conserving life. The reason is that it is the same thing not to preserve life for oneself as to take it away from oneself. By ordinary means; for one is not bound to extraordinary means, unless his life is altogether necessary for the common good. And indeed extraordinary means are placed outside common powers. Therefore the law cannot commonly command them. But the labor of those who are occupied with the necessity of supporting life, such as workers, is not an extraordinary means, but an ordinary one, since it is a means given by nature itself for the necessities of life. L. 372.

You will resolve: A sick man in danger of death, when there is hope of safety, cannot reject ordinary medicines prescribed for him. One is not bound to make immense expenses for conserving life for oneself, or to use choice remedies which cause immense pains for him, for example, the amputation of a leg, incision of the abdomen for extracting a stone, etc. A virgin is not bound to suffer an operation by the hands of a physician, even if life is endangered, when because of modesty it happens to be most grave for her, and brings upon her a greater horror than death itself.

It is also lawful for a virgin to suffer death rather than permit her own violation, because of the very great good of virginity. It is lawful, for probably she is not bound, at least speaking speculatively, provided that she resists with a positive will, and the proximate danger of consent is absent. The reason is that this permission is not formal cooperation in the sin of another, but only material, and a just cause of permission is present, namely the danger of death. Likewise it is lawful for a virgin, in order to preserve chastity, to expose herself to the danger of death, at least if death is not certainly going to follow, and this both because of love of chastity and because of the danger of sin, which is often present in such an occasion. Indeed, more probably it must still be affirmed, even if death is certainly going to follow and there is no proximate danger of consent; because even bodily integrity alone is esteemed very highly. L. 366, 368, 372, 430, 433; H. A. l. 2; S. Th. 2. 2, q. 65, a. 1; Struggl 6; tr. 6 de Iust. et Iure q. 5, a. 1, nn. 5, 10; La-Croix l. 3, p. 1, n. 916; Lugo d. 10, nn. 197, 198.

Is it lawful to concur indirectly in one's own death? It is lawful, from a grave cause, to concur indirectly in the killing of oneself, or to posit an action from which, besides the intention, one's own death certainly follows, provided that from that action there follows at least equally immediately some good, and this alone is intended. The reason is that then death, if it follows, is not willed, but merely permitted, from a proportionate cause. Cf. 36. Struggl 7; L. 366.

You will resolve: It is lawful for an accused man not to flee, indeed even voluntarily to present himself before the judge, although he certainly must be punished with death; because that action is per se indifferent, indeed even honorable. For in the case to will to die is the same as to will the order of justice; and just as for a just cause it is lawful to desire death for another, and also to procure it in a legitimate way, so also for oneself. L. 369; H. A. 2. Artisans do not sin who ascend upon the roofs of buildings, and expose themselves, where there is need, to various dangers; nor blacksmiths, who daily diminish life for themselves by handling fire; the reason is that they do this from a reasonable cause.

On the contrary, bold men sin gravely who by rash wagering, from vainglory, or merely by reason of gain, throw themselves into grave dangers, by ascending on high, letting themselves down, bearing heavier burdens, etc. Hence dangerous bullfights also are prohibited, unless the danger is sufficiently removed by art and skill. L. 365, 369; l. 7, n. 209. It is never lawful to macerate the body in order to shorten life, nor also, that end being excluded, by immoderate and wholly indiscreet penances gravely to ruin health. Yet it is lawful, from virtue, to use penances ordinarily grave, with a certain abbreviation of life, because for the sake of merit and the mortification of depraved nature, some loss of longer life can be contemned.

They are very useful to the spiritual life, as the practice of the Saints and the unanimous opinion of doctors show well. L. 370, 371; H. A. 2; Lugo de Iust. et Iur. d. 10, nn. 32, 36; S. Th. Quodl. 5, a. 18; Denifle, Lutero, l. 1, s. 2. But these things concern the ordinary way; for God often inspired altogether extraordinary penances in the Saints, whose health was often the more robust the less they spared themselves. Cf. Benedict XIV, de Canoniz. SS. l. 3, c. 29, n. 6; L. Prax. 25, 26.

It is lawful, at least more probably, to set fire to a ship or a tower, so that enemies may suffer grave damage, although with the certain loss of one's own life, because it is expedient that public damage be avoided, or that the common good be procured, even with the most certain damage of private persons. L. 367. Consequently it is also lawful for a soldier, with certain danger of life, to occupy a station, or to rush into the midst of enemies. Likewise someone can leap through a window from a burning house, or throw himself into the sea from a burning ship, not indeed to seek death, but to avoid a harder one. The same must be said of a virgin who casts herself headlong from a very high window, in order to be snatched from the hands of an impure violator. Elbel 13; Struggl 8; Gur. Cas. 377, 379, 384.

What is to be said about suicides and duellists? As regards suicides, the Holy Office, May 16, 1866, has these things: "When it is certainly established either concerning anger or despair, ecclesiastical burial must be denied and the pomps and solemnities of exequies must be avoided; but when insanity is certainly established, ecclesiastical burial is given with the solemnities of exequies; yet when doubt remains whether someone gave death to himself through despair or through insanity, ecclesiastical burial can be given, with the pomps and solemnities of exequies nevertheless avoided."

Duellists, according to Benedict XIV, constitution Detestabilem, sec. 9, are deprived of ecclesiastical burial, although they have been absolved, and even before the sentence of a judge, whether they die in the place of the duel or afterwards outside that place. But duellists do not incur the penalties of duellists because of an unexpected encounter, although those fighting, from the same impulse of quarrel, have gone equally to some suitable place. S.C.C., October 5, 1744; E.M.

What is required for gaining Jubilee? It is necessary to have the intention of gaining Jubilee, virtual or at least habitual. Moreover the prescribed works must be exactly fulfilled, and they cannot be commuted without the express faculty of the Supreme Pontiff. This faculty the Pontiff ordinarily grants to confessors for those impeded. Laymann, book 5, tract 8, chap. 8, n. 12.

In the general lesser Jubilee, the following works are regularly enjoined: fasting, alms, visitation of churches, with pious prayer according to the intention of the Supreme Pontiff, Confession, Communion. In the general greater Jubilee the prescribed works are: Confession, Communion, visitation of churches. Benedict XIV, Brief Inter praeteritos, December 3, 1749, for the Jubilee of the holy year; L., book 6, n. 536. For a particular Jubilee attention must be paid to the tenor of the Indult granted. Cf. Benedict XIV, Constitution In suprema, November 20, 1744, and Constitution Nullis verbis, February 20, 1745.

Works already owed from some other obligation cannot serve for gaining Jubilee, unless this is granted by the Supreme Pontiff. Benedict XIV, Encyclical Inter praeteritos, § 53; L., book 6, nn. 536, 538. They can be fulfilled in whatever order, as one wishes. Nevertheless it is necessary that one be in the state of grace when he fulfills the last one. Benedict XIV, Encyclical Inter praeteritos, §§ 73, 77. There is no obligation of completing the same works in one and the same week. Sacred Penitentiary, March 16, 1865; Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 1, p. 176.

They can be fulfilled in one's own diocese, or in another diocese, conforming oneself to the prescriptions of the Ordinary of the place. Sacred Congregation of Indulgences, November 28, 1759; Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 8, p. 486, vol. 18, p. 334. Likewise someone can perform Confession and Communion in a foreign diocese, and the other works in his own, again conforming himself to the prescriptions of the Ordinary of the place. Sacred Penitentiary, 1875; January 15, 1886; Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 8, p. 486, vol. 18, p. 334. If Jubilee is prolonged for those traveling by sea, they can gain the Jubilee after their return to their homeland, by fulfilling the prescribed works, or gain it when they have arrived at some place of station. Sacred Penitentiary, 1875; Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 8, p. 485; L., n. 538. E.M.

1. Maurus, a novice, of strong powers and robust complexion, began to labor under grave pain of the head, although before entrance into Religion he had enjoyed the best health. Several remedies were applied, but in vain, to the great sorrow of Maurus, because, as the disease grew worse day by day, he became altogether unfit for the ministries proper to that Religion, and there was already question of his departure. After other physicians, Eugenius was called, a physician endowed with extraordinary knowledge and experience, but not of equal fame. Eugenius observed the sick man and, without any hesitation, immediately declared that he could cure the sick man, and with all certainty, if nevertheless the matter turned out well. For after other medicines had been applied, he said, one most efficacious still remains, which indeed will place the sick man in proximate danger of death; but if this is overcome, as there is certain hope, Franciscus [i.e., Maurus] will be immune thereafter through his whole life from an infirmity of this sort. The medicine was applied, and Maurus completely recovered, and is still well, and is an outstanding preacher.

Q. 1. Is there a precept of conserving one's own life? 2. Could Maurus apply such medicine?

R. To the first. Cf. I. M. 715, 716. To the second. Since the danger of death is nothing but a mere probability and not certainty of death, whence danger of death is distinguished from the article of death, a proximate danger of death, in the case, is really only a grave and very grave probability of death; on the contrary, in the case, there is moral certainty of health to be restored. That probability in no way contradicts this certainty speculatively. For that danger of death is considered from the extrinsic efficacy itself of the drug, not from the intrinsic disease of the sick man. But the certainty is taken from the intrinsic state of health of the sick man. Hence practically, in the case, there really is not a grave danger of death; but on the contrary there is moral certainty of recovering health. But this can be had, in the case, because Maurus, a young man otherwise of robust health and strong complexion, is deservedly judged able to resist the crisis which the violent drug will determine in him; and in this crisis every root of the evil is to be directly destroyed altogether by the powerful virtue of the aforesaid drug, or by force of the same crisis the aforesaid cause of the infirmity is to be dissolved. Therefore, since there is had a moral certainty both of overcoming the danger and, as is asserted by the skilled physician, of expelling the cause of the disease and the disease itself, it is permitted to commit oneself to such a danger, given the most grave cause: that otherwise Maurus would have to pass his whole life uselessly and be afflicted with grave pain of the head. Besides, in that first hypothesis made, namely that from the power of the drug the crisis is directly determined, and the root of the infirmity is directly extinguished, there is had an act producing two effects, of which one is good and is the one which alone is intended, while the other is evil, and this is beyond the intention and is merely permitted. But a very grave reason is not lacking why the bad effect can reasonably be permitted and the act placed. But in the other hypothesis, that the drug determines the aforesaid crisis of the whole organism, and by this same crisis the whole cause of the evil is resolved, as happens in various diseases, then the crisis cannot be called simply evil, but indifferent, since it is both evil and good at the same time: evil on account of the loosening of powers and weakness, good on account of the extinction of the depraved quality which is the cause of the disease. Wherefore again the case returns to an act producing two effects.

Hence, a fortiori, that seems to have been licit which I heard narrated about a certain man who was coming from America into Europe. Having been seized by a most grave disease of fever, which is commonly called flaca, and now altogether despaired of, he was cured by a certain hot and very powerful intoxicating potion. - Cf. I. M. 334 and V. 2, n. 89.

2. Eulalia, a pious virgin and most loving of chastity, when on a certain day she was being compelled to lust by a soldier and could not otherwise escape the danger, threw herself from a high window and, falling upon sand which by chance was found heaped in great quantity in the public way for repairing it, remained unharmed. After some months, violently seized by the same soldier, most constantly refusing to sin, she most urgently asked him that he would rather kill her than violate her; and then the fierce soldier, burning with anger, slew her with the sword.

Q. 1. Is it permitted to kill oneself? 2. What as to the case?

R. To the first. Cf. I. M. 710 seqq. To the second. Eulalia could rightly throw herself from the window, although this was done with evident danger of life, and although in fact she had afterward died. The reason is that first Eulalia did not intend to kill herself, but only to escape from the hands of the worst man who wished to violate her. But that action of throwing herself from the window, in these and similar circumstances, is an indifferent action, namely of fleeing in the case from the hands of a lascivious man, and of falling from the window to the earth. And, if it is considered well, that action is first an action of fleeing, and then of falling from the window to the earth, that is, first it is flight, and then a casting down from the window to the earth. And thus the same is permitted, even to escape a harder death, for example, in a fire, or also, probably, to free oneself thus by flight from the squalor of perpetual prison. G. 377, 379, 384; L. 367.

Eulalia could also ask the soldier that he kill her rather than violate her. For by this request Eulalia first certainly did not intend to induce the soldier to kill her, but only to avert him from the base violation of herself, to which she preferred death. But by that request Eulalia did not directly procure her killing, nor did she induce the soldier to kill her. For, force having been inflicted on her, since she had already been violently seized, she asked the soldier that he inflict on her rather the lesser evil of death than the evil, far greater to her, of base violation. Therefore she did not directly procure death, nor provoke the soldier to homicide; but she directly procured that she avert the soldier from inflicting a greater harm on her and from violation of herself, permitting her own death instead, if that soldier should be unwilling to desist from so great a crime. And in fact, to ask the soldier to kill her rather than violate her is not to ask that he kill, but to ask that he not violate, while at the same time showing a spirit prepared to undergo death rather than to consent to her violation.

3. Anselmus, a Carthusian, exercises grave tortures upon his own body by disciplines and hairshirts, uses sparing food also, and takes brief sleep; although he thinks that for this reason perhaps he will die sooner. Nevertheless, only after several years is he gravely ill, but even then he refuses to eat meat, although the physician has prescribed it as a necessary means for recovering health. Likewise he refuses to leave the cloister and return to his family for some time, although the same physician asserts that a change of air is altogether necessary for him.

Q. 1. What is the obligation of conserving life? 2. What as to the case?

R. To the first. Cf. I. M., n. 715 seqq. To the second. Anselmus in no way sinned by exercising various exterior penances. For by exercising them discreetly, which sufficiently appears in the case, life is not taken away, but only its vigor and longevity are not procured; and to this no one is held of itself. But spiritual utility and the exercise of virtue prevail over bodily convenience. Otherwise so many saints would have sinned gravely, rather than having been sanctified. And if it is permitted to artisans to sweat over hard works, and to diminish life for themselves by daily laboring, and to expose themselves to so many dangers of death, why will it not be permitted to a religious man to embrace bodily austerities for the good of virtue, by the counsel of a prudent prelate or confessor? Lig. 371. Wherefore Anselmus is not held either to eat meats even to avoid death, or to seek healthier air outside the cloister in his own country and family. Hence also someone can enter Religion although he is weak in health, nor afterward is he held to depart from the novitiate, or to seek food different from the common food, although he foresees that his life will be shortened from this. - Lugo, De Iust. et Iur., d. 10, n. 32 seqq.; Lig. 370, 371; G. 386, 387.

Besides, in singular cases, it matters very much to attend to what age, physical complexion, disposition, state, and condition that person is, to whom mortifications and exterior penances of this sort are conceded. "One must judge differently concerning the end, and differently concerning those things which are for the end. For that which is sought as an end must be sought without measure. But in those things which are for the end, measure must be applied according to proportion to the end. Therefore it must be considered that in the spiritual life the love of God is as the end; but fasts, vigils, and other bodily exercises are not sought as the end, but are applied as necessary for the end; and therefore things of this sort must be applied with a certain measure of reason, so that namely concupiscence may be tamed and nature not extinguished.... But if someone weakens the power of nature so much by fasts and vigils and other things of this sort that he is not sufficient to execute due works, for example, the preacher to preach, the doctor to teach, the singer to sing, and so concerning others, without doubt he sins; just as a man would also sin who by excessive abstinence rendered himself impotent to render the debt to his wife." St. Thomas, Quodlibet 5, a. 18.

389. Principles. - I. It is never lawful for anyone to kill himself directly, that is, from intention and by his own authority ¹. This is clear: 1. from the divine precept: Thou shalt not kill. Exod. 20. 13. - I will kill, and I will make alive. Deut. 32. 39. - For Thou art, O Lord, who hast power of life and death. Wisd. 16. 13. 2. From natural law. For man does not have direct dominion over his body, nor over his life, but only useful dominion and administration, since he does not have these from himself, but has received them from God ², and he must return them to God alone when He demands them. Therefore a suicide injures the supreme dominion of God by destroying a thing not his own. He also injures society, of which he is a part, as St. Thomas says, 2. 2, q. 64, art. 5 ³.

¹ Namely, divine authority being excluded. Yet Lessius suggests that this crime can be excused by ignorance according to the sense of the holy Fathers (De Iust. et Iur., lib. 2, cap. 9, n. 23).

² Why man, who has received from God both life and extrinsic goods, has dominion of these goods but not likewise of his own life, Molina (De Iust. et Iur., tom. IV, disp. 1, n. 1) and Lugo (De Iust. et Iur., disp. 10, n. 9 and 17) explain excellently.

The reason can be added that the present life is essentially the condition of a man serving God, and therefore subject to His laws and obeying His precepts; from which condition afterward he obtains either reward or punishment in the future life. But: 1. it ought not to be in the power of one serving God to end the time of serving according to his own choice; and 2. much less ought it to be in his power to be able, with impunity and at pleasure, to withdraw himself from the precepts of God perhaps troublesome to him. But each inconvenience of this sort would follow if man were free to place the end of his own life whenever it pleased him. Therefore.

³ The canons of the Church forbid suicides to be buried in a sacred place. Yet this is not to be understood of those who killed themselves from fury, insanity, or a passion of most grave sadness with imagination disturbed, or who before death truly grieved concerning this (St. Alphonsus, lib. 3, n. 375). The reason is that the pious mother Church is not accustomed to inflict this penalty unless it is clear that someone, while he killed himself, was plainly in possession of himself. But in doubt whether a suicide was endowed with full judgment, one must incline in his favor, although such persons have been accustomed to be buried with less ceremony, for example with only one or another priest accompanying.

But from common civil law, both suicides and those who attempt this crime, even when death has not followed, are punished with the penalty of infamy.

II. Without divine authority it is never right to place an external act tending per se immediately to one's own destruction, unless that act has another good and immediate effect which alone is intended, and a most grave reason urges that this good effect be obtained. The reason is that where a physical act, even one per se indifferent, has no other effect than suicide, it now becomes evil, since no reason is present by which the precept of preserving life and of guarding against danger of death ceases. Therefore in any case whatever it is prohibited.

III. It is lawful to concur indirectly in the killing of oneself, or to place an action from which, besides one's intention, one's own death will certainly follow; provided from that action there follows equally immediately some good which compensates the loss of life, and this alone is intended. The reason is clear from what was said in the Treatise on Human Acts, where voluntary indirect is treated, n. 9.

390. Questions. - Q. 1. Whether it is lawful to set fire to a ship or tower so that the enemies may suffer grave damage, but with certain loss of one's own life?

Resp. It is affirmed, at least more probably; because it is expedient that public damage be avoided, or the common good be procured, even with the most certain damage of private persons. - Lugo, Lessius... - St. Alphonsus, n. 367 ⁴.

⁴ St. Alphonsus (lib. 3, n. 367, q. II) brings in Doctors on this matter as if dissenting, and for the negative opinion he also alleges St. Thomas (2. 2, q. 64, art. 5). But in reality there is no dissension among the Doctors; they prefer a diverse solution of the question only because they establish a diverse hypothesis or question. And so St. Thomas and others with him deny that this is lawful for avoiding a private inconvenience, or for escaping other miseries of this life, for example captivity or even death to be inflicted on oneself by others. But this does not fight against the common opinion of others, that this is lawful where the cause of the public good or the reason of averting public damage intervenes.

Q. 2. Whether a virgin can expose herself to danger of death for preserving chastity?

Resp. It is affirmed, at least if death is not certainly going to follow, and this both on account of love of chastity and on account of the danger of sin which is rather often had in such an occasion. Thus commonly theologians. - Indeed more probably it must still be affirmed, although death is certainly going to follow and there is not a proximate danger of consent; because even the integrity of the body alone is esteemed most highly. - St. Alphonsus, n. 366; Hom. apost., n. 1. - Laymann, etc.

Q. 3. Whether a virgin is bound to permit herself to be killed rather than violated ⁵?

⁵ Note that the question is posed whether she is bound, not whether it is lawful; for all agree that it is lawful to suffer death rather than the loss of modesty. Moreover, Taberna says that a girl does not sin if, on account of evident danger of death or of immense infamy, she does not apply all means for repelling the ravisher, for example if, when she could, she does not kill him, does not call out to the neighborhood, but merely suffers intercourse, nevertheless with every danger of consent excluded. But although more than fifty Authors hold this proposition in published books..., among whom are St. Antoninus, Sylvester, Soto, Navarre, Toletus, Lessius, Reginald, Gonet, etc.; nevertheless it is not expedient to propose it publicly..., because it is apt to cause abuses especially among the uneducated. Thus Croix, lib. 5, part. 1, n. 916, where Fr. Ant. Zacharia added a not useless note.

The opinion of Cornelius a Lapide on Daniel, chap. XIII, v. 23, where he treats of Susanna provoked by the elders to sin, also bears on this: "Yet in such a danger of infamy and death, Susanna could have conducted herself negatively, and permitted their lust upon herself, provided by an internal act she had not consented to it, but had detested and execrated it; because reputation and life are a greater good than modesty, whence it is lawful to expose this for that... But that she cried out... was an act of distinguished and heroic chastity: for such is to prefer to die than to be polluted."

Resp. No, probably, at least speaking speculatively, provided she positively resists by the will, and the proximate danger of consent is absent. The reason is that this permission is not formal cooperation in the sin of another, but material only; and a just cause of permission is present, namely danger of death. Yet this practice does not seem to be counseled when a danger of some consent can prudently be feared.

Q. 4. Whether it is lawful for a guilty person to present himself before a judge, although he must certainly be punished by death?

Resp. It is affirmed. Because that action per se is indifferent, indeed also honorable; for in the case to will to die is equivalent to willing the order of justice; and just as it is lawful from a just cause to desire death for another, and even to procure it in a legitimate manner, so also for oneself. - Lugo. - Lessius. - St. Alphonsus, Hom. apost., n. 2.

391. Resolves. - 1. Each one is bound to preserving life, since no one can cast away the gift of this life without sin, and not to preserve life is equivalent to taking it from oneself ⁶.

⁶ ** Nevertheless, from the most common opinion of the Doctors, it is lawful to yield a plank to a friend in a shipwreck even with certain loss of life; indeed from St. Thomas this would be of the most perfect virtue (see Fagundez, In Dec., lib. V, cap. 12, n. 18). St. Alphonsus also agrees (lib. 3, n. 366), even if the plank has already been taken, and to confirm this he reports the remembered doctrine of St. Thomas. But then he is moved by the scruple of Sylvius, who (In 2. 2, q. 26, a. 1) does not concede this unless on account of skill in swimming the danger of death is absent. Whence St. Alphonsus adds: "But Sylvius rightly observes that he cannot, in order to yield the plank, throw himself into the sea, because no one can positively kill himself." But these things are with difficulty reconciled with the preceding; for if he has already taken the plank, the lowering or throwing of himself into the sea is a necessary consequence of the plank yielded, even according to Sylvius, who says: "If he has already begun to use the plank, he does not seem able to relinquish it unless he throws himself into the sea."

Moreover, as Fagundez (l.c.) observes, you can indeed lawfully yield the plank then, but you are not bound, other things being equal. Other things being equal, I say; for you could be bound if the public good required that the life of the other be preserved; and on the contrary it would not be lawful if from the loss of your life grave damage were threatening others, for example a family necessarily to be supported.

2. It is never lawful to place, with the intention of killing oneself, an action from which death is going to follow, although only by accident; because ⁷ it is never lawful to will a forbidden thing and to reduce this will to act.

⁷ The reason is sought from the preceding resolution, or also from principle II above, n. 389, of which here you have a repetition.

3. Someone is not bound to preserve life by extraordinary remedies, or those which bring the greatest pain. The reason is that there is no obligation of preserving life except by ordinary means, namely those which neither bring great inconveniences, nor demand expenses immense according to the varied condition of each person, nor cause very bitter pains, etc. Thus, for example, you are not bound for the sake of preserving life to suffer the amputation of a leg or arm, or an incision of the belly for extracting a stone. - St. Alphonsus, n. 372.

4. A virgin is not bound to suffer an operation by the hands of a physician, even if life is in danger, when on account of shame this befalls her as something most grave and brings upon her a greater horror than death itself. - St. Alphonsus, ibid.; Hom. apost., n. 2.

5. It is never lawful to macerate the body for shortening life, nor, even with such an end excluded, gravely to ruin health by immoderate and altogether indiscreet penances. Yet it is lawful from virtue to use penances ordinarily grave with a certain shortening of life, because from the common opinion of the Doctors, on account of merit or the mortification of depraved nature, some loss of a longer life can be contemned. - St. Alphonsus, n. 371; Hom. apost., n. 2.

6. Craftsmen do not sin who climb upon the roofs of buildings and expose themselves to various dangers where there is need; nor blacksmiths who daily lessen their life by handling fire; the reason is that they do this from a reasonable cause. On the contrary, bold men sin gravely who from a rash wager and vain glory cast themselves without cause into grave dangers by climbing high, letting themselves down, carrying heavier burdens, etc., etc.

7. It is not lawful to mutilate oneself unless it is necessary for the preservation of the whole body, because man is not the master of his members, but only the custodian, and whatever man is, the whole is God's, nor does he have any other dominion over his body except useful or indirect dominion. Yet St. Alphonsus does not reject as improbable the opinion affirming that this is lawful for the preservation of the voice, if other conditions are present ⁸. - St. Alphonsus, l. 3, n. 374.

⁸ The conditions from St. Alphonsus are that moral danger of life be absent, and that it not be done to boys unwilling. The reason of this opinion is, says St. Alphonsus, both because eunuchs are useful to the common good for singing divine praises in churches more sweetly, and because the preservation of the voice must be said to be a good of no small moment in them, since through it they notably change their condition for the better..., and therefore so great a good seems to be a just cause that with it such a harm of the body can lawfully be compensated; so much the more because this is daily brought into use and is tolerated by the Church, as Elbel says. Benedict XIV, although he inclined to the opinion which he called more common, that voluntary emasculation is not to be excused from sin, nevertheless advises Bishops not to wish to prepare troubles and offenses for themselves without cause by eliminating singers of this sort from musical choirs. De Synod., lib. 2, cap. 7, n. 3-6.

8. It is not lawful to mutilate oneself for a spiritual good, or for avoiding any sin whatever. For as St. Thomas says, "spiritual safety can always be assisted otherwise than by the cutting off of a member, because sin is subject to the will. And therefore in no case is it lawful to cut off a member for avoiding whatever sin" (2. 2, q. 65, art. 1, ad 3) ⁹.

⁹ Add that mutilation of this sort indeed renders someone impotent for generating, yet it does not exempt from carnal temptations. But the discipline of the Church brands with the mark of irregularity the eunuch who, outside the necessity of saving life, has furnished consent to his mutilation. Benedict XIV, De Syn., lib. 2, cap. 7, n. 5.

9. More probably it is lawful for one to cut off for himself a hand bound by a chain, for avoiding death threatening from a beast, or a tyrant, or a fire, because the part must yield to the good of the whole man. - Lugo, de Iustitia, disp. 10, n. 22. - Lacroix, n. 786. - Billuart, against others. - See Cases, n. 376 and following.

289. Historical survey. (A) Among the Jews very few examples of suicide are found, both because that crime was prohibited by God, and because the Israelites desired to be long-lived upon the earth. The cases indeed are alleged of Samson,³ Saul,⁴ Achitophel,⁵ Eleazar,⁶ Razias;⁷ but Samson and Eleazar did not properly commit suicide, but gave their life for their country, in order to rout enemies.

² St. Thomas, 2. 2., q. 64, a. 5; Lugo, disp. X, n. 1-55; Lessius, lib. I, cap. 9, dub. 6; Billuart, diss. X, art. 3; St. Alphonsus, n. 366-375; Carriere, n. 833-856; Ball. P., tr. VI, n. 855-875; Tissot, De la manie du suicide, Paris, 1841; Lisle, Du suicide, Paris, 1856; Morselli, Il suicidio, Milan, 1879; Legoyt, Le suicide ancien et moderne, Paris, 1881; Masaryk, Der Selbstmord als sociale Massenerscheinung, Vienna, 1881; Westcott, Suicide, its history, litterature, etc., London, 1885; Bonomelli, Il suicidio, Milan, 1892; E. Durkheim, Le Suicide, etude de sociologie, Paris, 1897; P. Hauviller, Du suicide, unite de son etiologie, son traitement, Paris, 1899; L. Proal, Le Crime et le suicide passionnels, Paris, 1900; Gurnhill, The Morals of suicide, London, 1900.

³ Jud., XVI, 22-30.

⁴ I Reg., XXXI, 2-6.

⁵ II Reg., XVII, 23.

⁶ I Mach., VI, 43-46.

⁷ II Mach., XIV, 37-46.

(B) Among the Greeks,¹ the chief philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, regarded self-killing as something cowardly; yet some killed themselves, whether on account of the public good, or to avoid disgrace or other private evils; such were Codrus the Athenian, Menoeceus the Theban, Cleomenes, king of Sparta, Themistocles, Isocrates. The Stoics advocated suicide as an act of virtue, by which they could at their pleasure be snatched from the bonds of life; and also the Epicureans, as a means of fleeing the bitternesses of life.

¹ Concerning the history of suicide among the Greeks and other Nations see Legoyt, op. cit., p. 7 sq.

(C) At Rome, as long as the citizens cultivated virtues and honorable and simple morals, suicide was almost unknown; especially the examples of Lucretia, Scipio of Utica, Cassius, and Brutus are cited. But as soon as wealth, luxury, and love of pleasures flourished, namely in the last times of the Republic and under the reign of the Emperors, many citizens, in order to avoid pains or a more cruel death, took away their own life.

290. (D) These morals the Christian religion corrected, by often inculcating human dignity, the value of life, patience in adversities, and trust in God. Hence, among Christians, suicides became exceedingly rare. There were indeed some who went to meet martyrdom, and also Christian virgins who, lest they lose virginity, did not hesitate to bring death upon themselves;² but the Fathers, especially St. Augustine,³ while they praised their virtue and right intention, reproved the deed itself. Likewise certain heretics, akin to the Donatists and called Circumcellions, approved suicide; these "were accustomed to kill themselves by various deaths, especially by precipices and waters and fires, and to seduce into that madness others of either sex whom they could."⁴ But for this reason they are severely censured by the Fathers.

² Thus St. Pelagia (in St. Ambrose, de Virginibus, III, 7), Domnica with her two daughters (Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., VIII, 12, in Migne, P. G. XX, 770-771), Sophronia (Eusebius, op. cit., VIII, 14, Migne, l. c. 786-787).

³ De civit. Dei, l. I, c. 26-27, in Migne, P. L. XLI, 39-40.

⁴ St. Augustine, De Haeresibus, n. 69, in Migne, XLII, 43.

291. (E) But in more recent times, as faith decreased and pagan morals gradually were reborn, not a few writers again advocated suicide, among whom were Montaigne, Montesquieu, Rousseau, who, otherwise little consistent with himself, elsewhere reproved that crime, - d'Holbach, Barbieri, J. Robeck,⁵ and generally the positivists and materialists. Therefore suicides became more frequent, especially in France and Germany.⁶ Besides, in various regions many more are committed among Protestants than among Catholics, even according to non-Catholic writers as witnesses.¹

⁵ Concerning these see Legoyt, op. cit., p. 85-99.

⁶ In France suicides are multiplied daily; - namely, in the year 1826 there were counted 1739; in 1851: 3639; in 1888: 8451; in 1897: 9156. If a comparison is made with other regions, already in the year 1888 France held the first place; for this was the proportion of suicides per 1,000,000 inhabitants: - in France: 212; in Prussia: 198; among the Belgians: 116; in Austria: 114; in England: 80; in Italy: 53. - In cities suicides are more frequent than among country people; thus per 1,000,000 inhabitants there are had at Leipzig: 450; at Paris: 400; at Berlin: 300; at Vienna: 290. Cf. M. Block, L'Europe politique et sociale, Paris, 1892, p. 459, 460, 462. - As to the causes of suicide, these things are read in M. Block, op. cit., p. 461: "Relatively to the presumed motives of suicides, the General Account gives the following averages for the period 1876-80: poverty and reverses of fortune, 698; family sorrows, 842; love, jealousy, etc., 254; drunkenness, 799; desire to withdraw oneself from judicial proceedings, 236; physical sufferings, 202; cerebral maladies, 1901; others and unknown, 627."

¹ Durkheim, op. cit., p. 149-173; Hauviller, op. cit., p. 62-65.

292. Division of the matter. Suicide is sometimes directly intended as an end or a means: then it is called direct; but sometimes it is not intended in itself, but is foreseen as probably going to follow from the action which is placed; thus a soldier about to fight for his country foresees that death will probably follow from the battle; then suicide, if it really occurs, is indirect. Hence we shall speak: 1. of direct suicide; 2. of indirect suicide; 3. by way of corollary, of mutilation of oneself, surgical operations, and care of one's own body.

293. 1. Principle: Suicide, directly and by one's own authority intended, is of itself a grave sin, injurious to God and harmful no less to the individual than to society.

It is said: by one's own authority... so that the case of one who would kill himself by divine inspiration may be excluded; - of itself, grave, because there can be some who in good faith, on account of various motives, take away their own life; but of itself the sin is mortal, on account of the motives which we now explain.

294. (A) It is a sin injurious to God;² for, from what has been said above (n. 34), perfect dominion over his own life does not belong to man, but only dependently upon God, its founder, supreme lord, and last end. Now, by taking away life from himself by his own hand, he violates God's rights: (a) since God, and indeed He alone, as supreme lord of all, has the right of disposing of human life, which He handed over to us after the manner of a deposit, and which we ought to use according to His will: for creatures essentially and according to their whole being depend upon the Creator; this indeed the Apostle intimates: "For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For whether we live, we live to the Lord; or whether we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."¹ (b) Moreover God, insofar as He is the last end, has a strict right that we tend toward Him by the means which He has determined; now He has established according to His wisdom the term of our life and probation, and therefore we usurp His rights if by premature death of our own will we put an end to this probation.²

² This is the chief argument; the two others only confirm it.

¹ Rom., XIV, 7-8.

² Some pagans had already understood this; for Socrates (in Plato, Phaed., c. 6) says: "This seems to me, O Cebes, to be said rightly, that God indeed has care of us; but we men are one certain thing among the possessions of the gods. Would you not therefore also be angry if one of your slaves killed himself, and, if you had power, would you not affect him with some punishment?"

Therefore deservedly St. Augustine writes that self-killing is prohibited by these words, You shall not kill: "It remains that we understand of man what was said, You shall not kill: neither another, therefore, nor yourself; for he who kills himself kills nothing other than a man."³

³ De Civ. Dei, lib. I, c. 20, in Migne, P. L., XLI, 35; a little above, c. 17, p. 30-31, he had said: "For surely, if it is not licit by private power to kill a man, even a guilty one, whose killing no law permits, certainly also he who kills himself is a homicide; and he becomes so much the more guilty when he kills himself, the more innocent he was in that cause for which he thought he ought to be killed."

295. (B) Harmful to the individual himself; for he who spontaneously casts away life by that very fact takes from himself not only a present good, but every further abundance of good. (a) For life is the greatest good which we can enjoy in the present life;⁴ for it is the condition without which we cannot enjoy other goods; as long as we live, we can acquire not only external goods, but also internal goods, namely knowledge, virtue, merits; but by voluntarily deserting life, we are deprived of all these things. (b) Moreover, as long as we preserve life unharmed, even if we are oppressed by various miseries and immersed in vices, hope remains that, circumstances having changed and morals having been reformed, things may proceed prosperously for us, and that we may redeem the faults of our past life by due satisfaction and by the practice of virtues; but if suicide is perpetrated, every hope vanishes, and nothing remains except that we pay the penalty proportioned to our faults. (c) It is a law implanted in our nature that we cultivate by manly effort the faculties received from God, physical, mental, and moral; the more perfect this development is, the greater is our happiness, since by the legitimate and progressive exercise of the faculties we approach more closely our last end; but, on the other hand, if life is cut off immaturely, man withers like a dried flower, before he has attained the degree of perfection destined for him.

⁴ On the moment and value of life Olle-Laprune discusses excellently, Le prix de la vie, 3rd ed., Paris, 1896.

296. (C) Harmful to society. Every man is inserted into society as a useful member, and remains bound to it by certain bonds and duties, because he unceasingly receives many benefits from it: for he enjoys the protection of society, and by its aid he is able so to cultivate his faculties that their force is increased a hundredfold. Therefore he ought to pay the debts of charity and justice to the State; this indeed he can furnish by working, teaching, giving good example, and by other means by which the public good is promoted. Now, by departing from life by his own motion, the citizen despises all these duties, and gives scandal to those to whom he ought to have been of utility and edification. Deservedly, therefore, he is compared to a soldier who deserts the post where he ought to fight strenuously; deservedly he is held guilty of cowardice.

297. (A) First of all there are alleged the infirmities and miseries of human life, such as poverty, disease, especially incurable disease, old age, bitter pains, weariness, griefs, and other things of this kind; and from this it is inferred that death is more desirable than a life overwhelmed by so many and so great miseries.

But in this a false concept of life is presented; for we are not here upon earth in order to enjoy pleasures, but in order to cultivate virtues by the legitimate exercise of the faculties, to increase moral perfection, and to obtain a better life. Now nothing is more efficacious than tribulation for the practice of virtues; for virtue is perfected in infirmity, fortitude is strengthened in adversities,¹ patience is exercised by bearing pains bravely, merits are greatly increased; moreover, if we have sinned, an occasion offers itself for expiating faults by salutary penance. Thus the distresses of this life are rendered more tolerable; indeed they bring a certain joy, according to that word of the Apostle:² "And not only this, but we glory also in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience; and patience probation; and probation hope. And hope does not confound."

¹ Already Martial the poet had said: "In adverse things it is easy to despise life; he acts bravely who is able to be miserable."

² Rom., V, 3-5; cf. VIII, 18-39, where the same thing is set forth more fully.

298. (B) Others kill themselves because they cannot tolerate disgrace, since honor is life itself, and more precious.

A foolish excuse indeed! From the fact that others unjustly attack our reputation, must we punish ourselves by taking away life with a cruel hand? Nor indeed do we thus recover the good estimation of our neighbor; but, on the contrary, by living honestly and acting nobly we overcome false accusations. But if we have been guilty of some fault, reputation is recovered not by suicide, by which disgrace is increased, but by a praiseworthy life.

299. (C) Some, in order to preserve chastity, have gone to meet death, since virtue is much more precious than life.

And these indeed are subjectively worthy of excuse, on account of the right intention which they had, as St. Augustine notes; but, according to the same, this is not in itself a sufficient reason for committing suicide; for since purity is a virtue of the soul, it is not lost even when the body is oppressed, as the holy Doctor says:³ "Wherefore a woman violently oppressed without any consent, and forced by another's sin, has nothing which she may punish in herself by voluntary death: much less before this happens; lest certain homicide be admitted, while the very crime, although another's, still remains uncertain." - In reality, material integrity of the flesh is not more precious than life, since sometimes it is licitly lost, in surgical operations, in order to save life. - But what if there is present a danger of inwardly consenting? Not even in this case is it licit to kill oneself; for in so great a danger grace will not be lacking for resisting lust, provided it is earnestly sought: "But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will make also with temptation an outcome, that you may be able to bear it."⁴ Therefore nothing remains except that one must fight strenuously; and what is said of this temptation must be said of others: it is licit for no one, in order to overcome any temptations whatever, to kill himself; for evils are not to be done that goods may come.

³ De Civit. Dei, l. I, c. 18, in Migne, XLI, 31-32.

⁴ I Cor., X, 13.

300. (D) Not a few contend that they lead a useless life, indeed one burdensome to others, or even harmful, insofar as they give scandal, so that by killing themselves they promote the good of their neighbor or of society.

But that these motives are not sufficient is already clear from what has been said. (a) If someone leads a useless life, nothing prevents him by praying, working, and helping others by works of charity from bringing many benefits both to himself and to others;¹ for this is the law of Providence: that, while we do good to others, we contribute most greatly to our own happiness. (b) But if we impose burdens upon others, because of disease, old age, etc., by that very fact we offer them an occasion of exercising patience and acquiring merits; on the other hand, by bravely tolerating our infirmities, we are unto edification for them: "Bear one another's burdens, and so you shall fulfill the law of Christ."² (c) But if we have harmed society or our neighbor, the duty lies upon us of repairing scandal by honesty and sanctity of life; by no means, however, do we have the right of taking away our life, since this rather gives new scandal.

¹ This J. J. Rousseau, who elsewhere favors suicide, explains eloquently: "Suicide is a furtive and shameful death; it is a theft committed against the human race. Before leaving it, give back to it what it has done for you. - But I am attached to nothing, I am useless to the world. - Philosopher of a day! do you not know that you could not take a step upon the earth without finding some duty to fulfill, and that every man is useful to humanity by the sole fact that he exists? Senseless youth! if there remains at the bottom of your heart the least sentiment of virtue, come, that I may teach you to love life. Each time that you are tempted to go out of it, say to yourself: 'let me do one more good action before dying,' then go seek some indigent person to aid, some unfortunate person to console, some oppressed person to defend." (Nouvelle Heloise, III, letter 22.)

² Galat. VI, 2.

301. A point to be noted for practice. Since some are led to suicide by a certain auto-suggestion, by the force of which, by frequently thinking about their own miseries, they gradually persuade themselves that there is no other means of extricating themselves from these difficulties except to perpetrate suicide, it is of the greatest moment to turn their mind away from this continual thought, by suggesting to them some work of charity, or another occupation by which they may more easily overcome weariness of life.

302. 1. Principle: It is not licit to kill oneself indirectly, or to do or omit something from which death is foreseen as going to follow, unless from a proportionately grave cause.

This is clear from what was said in the Treatise on Human Acts, where voluntary indirect action was treated. For indirect suicide is nothing other than an act good of itself, or at least indifferent, from which death follows per accidens and beyond the intention; now an act of this kind is indeed not licit when there is no sufficient reason, because to posit the cause of some grave evil, without a sufficient motive, is something gravely sinful; but if a proportionate cause is present, it becomes licit; for the evil effect is not intended, but only permitted, and otherwise is compensated for by the good effect directly intended.

303. 2. What cause is proportionately grave? The general principle is that a greater cause is required the nearer and more certain the danger of death is. Let us run through the principal causes:

(A) The public good is a sufficient cause for someone to expose himself to a danger even proximate and certain of death; thus it is licit for soldiers to set fire to a ship, or to explode a fortress, in order to submerge or destroy enemies, although their own death would certainly follow from this; but this of itself is not licit merely in order to avoid captivity, unless some hope shines forth of avoiding death. - The fulfillment of the duties of one's state can be referred to the public good; thus priests, physicians, and other men to whom by office the care of others belongs can, and sometimes ought, to expose themselves even to proximate danger of death, in order to procure the salvation, life, or security of others.

304. (B) A good of a superior order, even individual, such as the exercise of charity, faith, chastity, justice, and other Christian virtues, is a sufficient reason for going to meet even certain danger of death.

Thus, for the sake of charity, someone can expose himself to danger of death in order to save the life of parents, a spouse, a friend, a neighbor; e.g., in shipwreck it is licit to yield to another a plank already seized, although it is foreseen that death will follow from this. For the sake of faith, it is licit not only to bear death bravely, but also not to flee, even if an opportunity offers itself, - indeed to present oneself to judges, if this is judged necessary for strengthening others in the faith. For protecting chastity, a virgin upon whom violence is inflicted can flee, and in fleeing can cast herself headlong from a high cliff or from a window, even if death can follow from this, yet not altogether certainly, because not death itself, but the keeping of virginity, is intended.

From love of justice, evildoers can offer themselves to judges to be condemned and killed; indeed, when someone has been found guilty of death, more probably he can, at the judge's command, take poison with his own hands (as is narrated of Socrates), because then he does nothing other than execute a just sentence; yet not a few contradict this, because it is repugnant to equity that the guilty man be compelled to kill himself.

305. (C) In order to avoid a more certain danger of death, or a more cruel kind of death, it is licit to expose oneself to a morally certain danger to life; thus it is licit to leap from a window, with very probable loss of life, in order to flee flames; to cast oneself headlong from a tower, even with certain danger of death, in order to flee a more atrocious death which evildoers are actually about to inflict.

306. (D) When there is question of a danger to life not certain, but more or less probable, a lesser cause suffices. Thus it is licit to serve those laboring under a contagious disease, even if there is a great danger of contracting the plague; craftsmen can exercise a dangerous art, e.g., ascend the roofs of buildings, even with probable danger of death, when this is useful for the support of themselves and their family. - But if there is question of arts less necessary and more dangerous, e.g., of taming wild beasts, penitents indeed should be kept away from these, insofar as this can be done; but if they have exercised these arts for a long time, and, because of the special skill with which they are endowed, the danger is not so proximate, and on the other hand they can scarcely otherwise provide for themselves and their own, they are not to be compelled to abandon their art.

307. When something is done or omitted from which life is shortened by several years, a less grave reason suffices; for the danger of death is not so proximate.

(a) Hence it is licit for workers to blow glass, gild metals, and exercise other arts by which life is rendered shorter; for the good, both private and public, demands that sometimes human life be shortened, whether for one's own support, or for the progress of industrial or mechanical affairs. Nevertheless an effort must be made that, in the best way possible, works entrusted to craftsmen be rendered less dangerous.

(b) Regularly no one is bound to use extraordinary means in order to live longer; for the law of prolonging life for a long time does not oblige with so great an inconvenience. Thus those who inhabit a region not very healthy are not bound to seek a healthier one by going to a distant region; those who could live longer by abstaining from a certain drink or food are not bound under grave sin to abstain from these, provided they observe the laws of temperance; nor is it necessary to undergo a dangerous operation in order to prolong life, unless per accidens this is necessary for the good of the family or of the State.

What duel is? Which things are touched here

81. 1. Duel, namely undertaken on private authority; since it is established that other combats can be justified. Moreover, a duel is a dangerous combat of two persons (or of a few, equal in number), which is undertaken from agreement, or from a certain pact previously made concerning place, time, and also, at least as usage bears, concerning weapons, and these lethal. It is called dangerous insofar as it brings danger of life, of mutilation, or at least of grave wound.

What suicide is

2. Suicide, or the direct killing of oneself, done by one's own authority.

Divorce?

3. Divorce, namely in the modern acceptance, or perfect, by which is designated the sacrilegious attempt of breaking the bond of marriage, even consummated marriage, so that the faculty is given of entering a new marriage while the partner is living.

What if they are said to be lawful by accident?

4. Lawful: whether in themselves, or even in any case whatsoever or by accident. For the mind of the Legislator is clear, by which he wished to protect Catholic doctrine.

When they are established as lawful

5. They establish, that is, they do not merely assert, but contend that it is so, or attempt to demonstrate it;¹ and this with that breadth which satisfies the inscription of chapter 5. Cf. n. 74, 2.

¹ Cf. Gennari, cited place, p. 40.

The life of the body is indeed a precious thing, but it is by no means the greatest of blessings,¹ and consequently the duty of preserving and safeguarding it does not bind absolutely. There are circumstances in which it may be necessary or advisable to sacrifice one's life. This is the case, for instance, when the duty of conserving life cannot be reconciled with some higher obligation, or when superior spiritual blessings must be purchased at the expense of life, either by the individual, or by the multitude. Hence man has the right, nay, under certain conditions he is in duty bound, to give up his life for the sake of a higher good.

¹ Cfr. Matt. X, 28, 39; XVI, 25 sq.; Mark VIII, 35–37; Luke IX, 24; XVII, 33; John XII, 25.

This duty must now be more closely determined, both negatively and positively.

No man is allowed without a just cause (sine iusta causa) to destroy his own life or health, or to expose himself to the danger of certain death, or seriously to mutilate his body. 1. SUICIDE (suicidium, αὐτοχειρία)² is the direct and intentional compassing of one's own death. This need not always be the immediate object of the will. If I will an action, I will its evident effect; and therefore, were I to refuse food, or, out of bravado, to leap from the top of a sky-scraper into the street below, I should be guilty of suicide, even though self-destruction was not my direct object. In suicide a man somehow aims at direct death.

² St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 64, art. 5; Sporer-Bierbaum, Theol. Mor., Vol. II, 2nd ed., tr. 5. n. 366–407; St. Alphonsus, Theol. Mor., l. III, n. 366–374 (ed. Gaudé, Vol. I, pp. 622 sqq.); M. Inhofer, Der Selbstmord, Augsburg 1886; E. Federici, La Prevenzione del Suicidio, Venice 1901, pp. 37 sqq.; K. A. Geiger, Der Selbstmord im klassischen Altertum, Augsburg 1888; M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, Dublin, 1917, pp. 52 sqq.; A. Van der Heeren in the Cath. Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, pp. 326 sqq.; A. O'Malley, The Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation, N. Y., 1919, pp. 7 sqq.

Suicide is plainly forbidden by the fifth commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill," ³ "either another or yourself," as St. Augustine explains; "for he who kills himself kills none other than a man." ⁴ The Lord God alone "has power of life and death." ⁵ Suicide is also forbidden indirectly because of the immoral motives that usually inspire it, e. g., unbelief, cowardice, false notions of honor, an excessive craving for glory, wealth, etc., or that dullness of mind which results from overindulgence in carnal pleasures and usually ends by making its victim incapable of further enjoyment.⁶ Seneca enumerates several causae frivolae that lead to suicide and mentions circumstances in which it is morally illicit to seek refuge in death.⁷ a) Suicide is diametrically opposed to the strongest instinct of nature, that of self-preservation. "The tendency to persevere in life," says Goyau, "is the necessary law of life, not of human life only, but of all life." ⁸ Hence it must always remain a difficult psychological problem why so many people commit this unnatural crime. In the light of recent investigations there can hardly be a doubt that most of those who compass their own death do so in a state of mental derangement. "Most suicides," says Dr. James J. Walsh, "are persons that have been recognized as paranoiacs and likely to do queer things for a long time beforehand. Indeed, some of the melancholic qualities on which the unfortunate impulse to self-murder depends are likely to have exhibited themselves in former generations.... As a matter of fact, suicides are not in possession of free will as a rule, but are the victims of circumstances and are unable to resist external influences." ⁹ However, it would be wrong to conclude from this that every case of suicide can be traced to some condition of organic disturbance in which the use of reason, and consequently responsibility, are suspended. Not every perturbation of the moral life springs from physical or physiological causes, and melancholia, idiosyncrasy, fixed notions, hallucinations or illusions do not always hinder the use of reason and destroy freedom of action. It would be equally wrong to ascribe every case of suicide to personal guilt, and positively foolish to adopt the Stoic view that suicide is not an act of cowardice, but rather a proof of courage, on the plea that by killing himself a man not only escapes evil and thereby follows an instinct implanted in his soul by God, but likewise relieves society of an intolerable burden, and, moreover, by an act of supreme self-sacrifice, atones for his crime and thus conciliates the eternal Judge.¹⁰ This view is radically false. For, in the first place, he who despairs in a difficult or hopeless situation and tries to escape the tribulations of life by committing suicide, does not display courage and strength of character, but the very opposite, and, secondly, all misfortunes, even those which a man incurs through his own guilt, must, from the Christian point of view, be regarded as trials in which he should exercise patience, faith, and confidence in God.¹¹ The decisive factor is not public opinion but the duty which the individual owes to society and which he is still able to fulfill, even though it be only by giving an example of Christian fortitude. Finally, for man to try to escape his judge instead of atoning for his sins in the way prescribed, namely, by contrition and penance, is a pagan, not a Christian motive. ¹²

³ Ex. XX, 13; cfr. Deut. XXXII, 39-

⁴ De Civitate Dei, l. I, c. 20: “It remains that we understand of man what was said: ‘You shall not kill’—therefore neither another nor yourself. For one who kills himself kills none other than a man.” (Migne, P. L., XLI, 35).

⁵ Wisd. XVI, 13.

⁶ A. Van der Heeren in the Cath. Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, p. 328; H. Rost, Der Selbstmord als sozialstatistische Erscheinung, Cologne 1905, pp. 23 sqq.; H. A. Krose, S.J., Der Selbstmord im 19ten Jahrhundert, Freiburg, 1906, pp. 28 sqq. IDEM, Die Ursachen der Selbstmordhäufigkeit, Freiburg 1906.

⁷ Cfr. M. Baumgartner, L. A. Seneca und das Christentum, pp. 135 sqq.

⁸ M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, p. 53 sq.; Vol. I, p. 90. The objection that it is incorrect to say that in committing suicide a person desires to compass his own destruction, because the soul does not disappear at death, while the body will rise again, and that, therefore, what is desired and accomplished in suicide is not annihilation, but a new life, more perfect than the present, and consequently suicide is not a violation of our natural appetite for continued existence and well-being, is refuted by Dr. Cronin as follows: "Natural tendencies are all tendencies to the well-being of the natural agent, the agent regarded as a product of nature. Nature could not set up in any thing a tendency towards a condition which is either unnatural or which is even above nature. But the natural constitution of man, from which spring all our natural powers and appetites, is that of a composite of body and soul combined to form one person. And, therefore, our natural desire for happiness is a desire for the happiness and well-being of the natural person, consisting of body and soul, In suicide, therefore, we use our natural powers for an end which is the frustration of their own natural purpose." (Ibid., Vol. II, p. 55).

⁹ O’Malley-Walsh, Essays in Pastoral Medicine, New York, 1906, p. 306.

¹⁰ K. Joest, Das Recht auf den Tod, Göttingen, 1895.

¹¹ St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, l. I, c. 26: "This we say, this we assert, this we approve in every way: that no one ought to inflict voluntary death upon himself as though fleeing temporal troubles, lest he fall into everlasting ones; no one on account of another’s sins, lest he himself begin that most grave sin of his own when another’s sin did not defile him; no one on account of past sins, for which this life is all the more necessary so that they may be healed by penance; no one as though from desire of the better life hoped for after death, because the better life after death does not receive those guilty of their own death." (Migne, P. L., XLI, 39).

¹² Ps. XXXIII, 19; L, 19. —A. von Oettingen, Die Moralstatistik, 3rd ed., p. 761, says: "The Protestant misses the energetic spiritual leadership of the Church; when unhappy, he does not so readily find consolation because he must do without the human mediation of the priesthood (confession)."

According to the principles of Christian morality a person who commits suicide while in the full possession of his mental faculties is not only a murderer and a criminal, but renounces God and the hope of salvation and forfeits every right to the blessings of the Church, including that to a Christian burial.¹³ In denying any one the last-mentioned privilege the Church, of course, does not mean to pass judgment on his probable fate in the other world.

¹³ Codex Iuris Canonici, can. 1240, § 1, n. 3: "Those who have killed themselves by deliberate design are deprived of ecclesiastical burial unless before death they have given some signs of repentance...." —Cfr. Rit. Rom., tit. 6, c. 2, n. 3; S. Offic., d. 16 Maii 1866.

Does suicide always result from (temporary or permanent) insanity, or is it sometimes committed by persons who are quite sane? While some eminent scientists ¹⁴ hold that perfectly normal persons can and do commit suicide, others ¹⁵ adopt the theory of Esquirol, who nearly a century ago¹⁶ asserted that "suicide is a disease." No doubt suicide is very often due to dementia, but it is equally undeniable that many who compass their own death are impelled by pique, despair or anger, which usually involve malice or culpable cowardice.¹⁷

¹⁴ E. g., J. Maschka, Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medizin, Vol. I, Tübingen, 1881, p. 477.

¹⁵ For instance, R. Gaupp, Ueber den Selbstmord, 2nd ed., Munich, 1910, p. 32.

¹⁶ He died 1840.

¹⁷ "Despair and anger," rightly observes Van der Heeren (Cath. Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, p. 328), "are not as a general thing movements of the soul which it is impossible to resist, especially if one does not neglect the helps offered by religion, confidence in God, belief in the immortality of the soul and in a future life of rewards and punishments."

Suicide is a moral, a social, a biological, and a psychological problem. Its frequency is governed by laws whose existence seems to be established by statistics, but whose nature we are but just beginning to surmise.¹⁸ b) As the theological notion of suicide implies the full use of reason and the deliberate intention, direct or indirect, of ending one's life, a man does not commit suicide if he kills himself accidentally, or through carelessness, or in order to escape certain danger of death, or when in a state of mental derangement, be it complete or partial, permanent or temporary; or indirectly by doing or omitting something the fatal consequences of which he might and should have foreseen, but does not advert to on account of their remoteness; e. g., leading a dissolute life, indulging in anger or intemperance, or mortifying his body beyond the bounds of reason. An act which is not in itself sinful and of which it cannot be foreseen that it will lead to the destruction of life (as, e. g., firing a gun, eating a food not known to be poisonous) is no sin. If death can be foreseen as the result of such a non-sinful act, the latter is forbidden, unless commanded by duty, as when a priest or a physician visits a patient who is suffering from a contagious disease or when a soldier goes into battle. If the act that results in self-destruction is in itself sinful, it is a voluntarium in causa with regard to such destruction, and may be imputed as a sin tending to self-destruction, which, however, is not suicide in the specific sense.

¹⁸ Cfr. Familler, Pastoralpsychiatrie, pp. 142 sqq.

The ecclesiastical penalty inflicted upon those who are guilty of direct suicide does not affect those who commit suicide indirectly. If direct suicide has been committed in a state of mental derangement, the victim should not be buried in the customary solemn manner, but quietly, i. e., without song, bell, or sermon; not as if the Church wished to judge the soul of the departed, but merely to indicate her sorrow at his misfortune and dreadful end. Where there is doubt as to the condition in which the act was committed, charity demands that the deceased be given the benefit of the doubt, and be buried with ecclesiastical honors. Mental alienation may be presumed, not only on the strength of expert opinion, but also on the testimony of trustworthy relatives or friends who were in personal touch with the deceased.¹⁹

¹⁹ Regulae Iuris in VIto Decret. Bonifat. VIII, n. 30: "In obscure matters the least burdensome course is to be followed." Ibid., n. 49: "In penalties the more favorable interpretation is to be made."

A point to which attention should be called is that the power of suggestion and example have much to do with the increase of suicide. Dymond, an authority in the matter, says: "The power of the example of the suicide is much greater than has been thought. Every act of suicide tacitly conveys the sanction of one more judgment in its favor. Frequency of repetition diminishes the sensation of abhorrence and makes succeeding sufferers, even of less degree, resort to it with less reluctance." Dr. Walsh, who quotes this passage, adds: "Our modern newspapers, by supplying all the details of every suicide that occurs, especially if it presents any criminally interesting features or morbidly sentimental accessories, familiarize the mind, particularly of the impressionable young, with the idea of suicide. When troubles come, lack of experience in life makes the youthful mind forecast a future of hopeless suffering. Love episodes are responsible for most of the suicides in the young, while sickness and physical ills are the causes in the old. In a certain number of cases, however, domestic quarrels, and especially the infliction of punishment on the young at an age when they are beginning to feel their independence and their right to be delivered from what they are prone to consider restriction, are apt to be followed in the morbidly unstable by thoughts of suicide." ²⁰ In order to forestall the putting into action of the suicidal impulse, Doctor Walsh suggests that those who are close to the patient should have some realization of the possibility of its occurrence. There are usually some previous indications of the suicidal trend. Many especially early suicides have distinct tendencies to and stigmata of hebephrenic melancholia. The best known symptoms of this condition are those described by Dr. Peterson in his book on mental diseases. The symptoms noted are extraordinarily rapid and paradoxical changes of disposition. Depressed ideas intrude themselves in the midst of boisterous gaiety, and untimely jocularity in the deepest depression, or at solemn moments. Then there is the paradoxical facial expression, the so-called paramimia, that is, a look of joy and pleasure when really mental depression is present, or a look of depression when joyful sentiments are being expressed.²¹

²⁰ Essays in Pastoral Medicine, p. 309.

²¹ Ibid., p. 309 sq.

The tendency of suicide to repeat itself in families is now well known and recognized. It is "not directly inherited, but there is a mental weakness that makes the individual incapable of withstanding the sufferings life may entail." ²² 2. SELF-MUTILATION. —As we are not masters of life, so neither are we owners of our limbs, and hence cannot dispose of them at will. A man is not justified in mutilating himself, but as the limbs of the body are subordinate to life, they may be sacrificed as parts for the whole if life can thereby be preserved. Hence the amputation of one or several limbs is permissible when it is the only means of preserving life. A sick man may allow an infected limb to be amputated in order to prevent infection of the whole body, and one who is handcuffed, e. g., in prison, may tear or cut off a hand or an arm, or both, in order to escape certain death, e. g., from fire.²³

²² Ibid., p. 310.

²³ Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, 2a 2ae, qu. 65, art. 1: "Since a member is a part of the whole human body, it exists for the sake of the whole, as the imperfect exists for the perfect. Therefore a member of the human body is to be disposed of according as it benefits the whole. Now, a member of the human body is of itself useful for the good of the whole body; accidentally, however, it can happen that it is harmful—for example, when a putrid member is corruptive of the whole body." —IDEM, Summa contra Gent., l. III, c. 112, n. 5: "It is manifest that all the parts are ordered to the perfection of the whole; for the whole does not exist for the parts, but the parts exist for the whole." —Cfr. J. P. Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., Lyons and Paris, 1850, Vol. I, n. 403, 9; H. Noldin, S.J., Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. II, 11th ed., Innsbruck, 1914, pp. 351 sq.

To mutilate oneself or to allow oneself to be mutilated for any other purpose than that of saving one's life, for instance, to escape military conscription, is not permissible.

Except as a remedy for diseased conditions of the body, castration or emasculation (eviratio) is never allowed, not even from religious motives, as, for instance, to preserve chastity or avoid temptations, because the operation is neither necessary nor useful for that purpose;²⁴ still less, of course, for minor ends, e. g., to keep the voice unbroken, because the preservation of a youthful voice is not a sufficient good to justify the commission of an act against nature. Following many censures of his predecessors, Leo XIII expressly forbade this practice for the singers of the Sistine Chapel.²⁵

²⁴ St. Jerome, Ep., 84 (al. 65), n. 8: "Origen fled pleasures to such an extent that, with zeal for God but not according to knowledge, he cut off his genital organs with a knife." (Migne, P. L., XXII, 750).—St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 65, art. 1, ad 3: "A member is not to be cut off for the bodily health of the whole except when the whole cannot otherwise be helped. Spiritual health, however, can always be helped otherwise than by cutting off a member, because sin is subject to the will. Therefore in no case is it lawful to cut off a member in order to avoid any sin whatsoever." —J. P. Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 403, 10: "It is not lawful to castrate oneself in order to preserve chastity or to quiet temptations, because emasculation is wholly useless for that end: it does not remove the temptations of the flesh so as to avoid sin, but merely prevents generation." —Cfr. O'Malley and Walsh, Essays in Pastoral Medicine, p. 339.

²⁵ Decree of Feb. 3, 1902. —H. Noldin, S.J., Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. II, 11th ed., p. 352: "The supreme pontiffs never approved the castration of boys, nor ever declared it lawful; indeed, they declared irregular those who culpably made themselves or others eunuchs...." Cfr. Benedict XIV, De Syn. Dioec., l. XI, c. 7, n. 3; C. Richert, Die Anfänge der Irregularitäten, Freiburg, 1901, pp. 104 sqq.

Vasectomy and the excision of the uterus or ovaries are operations which, though permissible when necessary for the direct preservation of life or health, would be sinful if performed for the sole purpose of superinducing sterility.²⁶

²⁶ S. C. S. Off., 22 May, 1895: "Si sia lecita la practica sia attiva sia passiva di un procedimento il quale si propone intenzionalmente come fine espresso la sterilizzazione della donna. R. Negative." Sabetti-Barrett, Comp. Theol. Mor., n. 267. —Cfr. H. Noldin, S.J., Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. II, p. 352: “Vasectomy consists in cutting the man’s semen-bearing ducts, so that all communication between the testicles and the male organ is prevented. A vasectomized man who has undergone this operation can indeed perform sexual acts through carnal intercourse, but he is altogether incapable of fertilization, since he cannot emit true semen produced in the testicles. This operation, which is performed in a very short time and is furthermore neither dangerous nor very painful, must morally be called unlawful unless it is necessary to preserve life or health.” —On vasectomy, see A. O'Malley, The Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation, pp. 244 sqq.

READINGS. —St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 64, art. 5. —James J. Walsh, Essays in Pastoral Medicine, Ch. xxvii, New York 1906.—F. A. Göpfert, Moraltheologie, Vol. II, 6th ed., pp. 6 sqq., Paderborn 1909. —Thos. Slater, S.J., A Manual of Moral Theology, Vol. I, pp. 301 sqq., New York 1908. —Aug. Lehmkuhl, S.J., Theologia Moralis, Vol. I, 11th ed., pp. 403 sqq. —Ad. Tanquerey, S.S., Synopsis Theologiae Moralis et Pastoralis, Vol. III, pp. 124 sqq., Tournai 1904. —Westcott, Suicide, its History, Literature, etc., London 1885. —Bonomelli, Il Suicidio, Milan 1892. —E. Durckheim, Le Suicide, Paris 1897. —Masaryk, Der Selbstmord als soziale Massenerscheinung, Vienna, 1881. —J. E. Ross, C. S. P., Christian Ethics, New York 1919, pp. 178 sqq. —Austin O'Malley, The Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation, New York 1919, pp. 7 sqq., 244, 260 sqq.

Principle. Malice of suicide. Insofar as we have received existence, we are not our own, but in ourselves we must reverence those from whom we draw our origin. Wherefore we offend piety itself by acts by which we violate our nature.

Now our nature is violated by every grave sin, but especially by certain sins by which we misuse nature itself or some substantial part of it. Thus the lustful abuse of one's own body is called by the Apostle a sin against one's own body (1 Cor. 6, 18). But the greatest impiety toward oneself is committed by him who, by directly bringing violence upon himself, at the same time violates the dominion of God and acts against charity toward himself.

The suicide violates the dominion of God. For, while he destroys himself, he directly disposes of himself, or performs an act of perfect dominion. That disposition, in order that it be done honestly, supposes dominion, or a faculty made by the lord. But dominion is not ours, but God's. Cf. 2, 2, q. 64, art. 5, c. Moreover no faculty is shown to have been made by any trial, any misery, or any temptation of this life, since all these bear another and better interpretation. And in very truth, it pertains to man's essential dependence that man accommodate himself to the trials such as God, through circumstances, requires of him, and that in them he show himself patient and faithful. But he who brings violence upon himself violates that essential order of dependence under God, since he intends to change the generic character of his probation, and, by taking life away from himself, removes the fundamental condition of every service.

He violates charity toward himself. For he who loves himself wishes to be, which is the fundamental good without which no good can be conceived. But the suicide, as such, wishes not to be. Nor object that nothing directly against the life of the soul is attempted. For the soul is not the whole man; but suicide denotes the destruction of a man perpetrated by man.

This is confirmed by the fact that the suicide acts against natural inclination, which manifests to us the divine order, since every thing preserves itself in being as much as it can. St. Thomas, l. c.

The suicide also radically refuses to perfect himself, since he violently departs from the state of probation; and he denies all the offices which society can exact from him from legal justice. Wherefore he is unjust also to the community itself. Cf. St. Thomas, l. c.

This reasoning also holds concerning suicide by starvation. For this is not endured without a positive will by which every instinct of seeking necessary foods is violently repressed. And the fundamental law by which we are commanded to act on account of our good at the same time imposes upon us the action which is necessary for that good.

Active permission of death. It is one thing directly to kill oneself; it is another actively to permit one's own death by performing, on account of a proportionate cause, an action with which the probable or even most certain danger of death is joined. Thus soldiers, with their own death foreseen, can blow up a fortress, or burn or sink a ship, lest the enemy from the captured fortress or ship perceive great utility. The same is not lawful for avoiding one's own servitude, because then one's own death is directly sought.

To indirect, or actively permitted, killing of oneself is also referred the act by which a virgin, fleeing a ravisher, does not indeed stab herself through, but casts herself headlong from a high place; indeed, if violation is imminent, she throws herself down from the highest tower. But that she should rather suffer death than allow herself to be violated, on account of the danger of consent, is a matter even of counsel.

Likewise he merely permits his own death who, in order that others may be allowed to be safe, in the open sea abandons an overly laden boat, or yields a plank to a friend.

It is lawful also for a guilty man not to flee; indeed, to liberate others, to preserve the weak in good, to confirm them in the faith, it is right for him to offer himself to a tyrant, and, with the latter's sin, to permit his own killing.

Can a guilty man obey a Prince or judge by whom he is commanded to kill himself by poison, noose, or sword? That matter is controverted. Most deny that it is lawful, e.g. Lessius, L. 2, c. 9, n. 25; Lugo, Iust. et Iur., d. 10, n. 11, because justice is toward another; some, as Vasquez, in 1, 2, d. 173, c. 3, at least when there is question of drinking poison, or of a less cruel death, seem to affirm it, because someone can bear a double person: that of executioner and of guilty man; nor is the relation of reverence and service toward oneself the same as toward a father. St. Alphonsus, L. 3, n. 369, Lehmkuhl, I, 733, and Palmieri, II, n. 862, note, hold this as probable. But it seems that it must be said thus: public power can never command the killing of oneself, because that cruelty toward oneself is required by no common good; and he who kills himself, as such, excludes himself from society and consequently does not cooperate with its good. But public power can command only social cooperation. Moreover, what it does not have power to command, here it cannot even permit, because permission concerning the death of a harmful man would take away the character of public vengeance and would attempt to render an intrinsically evil action lawful. For to permit a guilty man to kill himself is to give him the option of suicide or of execution.

Therefore God alone can refer that disorder to a higher end, and thus concede to someone that he take life away from himself.

What if you are commanded to drink poison already prepared? The drinking of poison denotes little more killing than a lethal blow or hanging does. He who drinks poison only immediately gives place to the specific action of the poison, almost as he who submits his neck to a noose or sword prepares the action of the executioner. Wherefore, in the presence of a killer prepared to compel, these three things, for forestalling violent inflictions otherwise inevitable, seem lawful.

From a sought danger of death it is not lawful to procure for oneself common utility, and much less gain. Wherefore rope-dancers sin who with great danger attempt certain things which, on account of the very danger, are received with applause; those also sin who test dangerous medicines, useless to themselves, upon themselves.

But if, independent of the danger, a sufficient utility is present in a dangerous attempt, or in the refusal of such food, e.g. of heretics, the action becomes honest and sometimes will be commendable. Thus he is praised who, with great danger to himself, casts himself headlong into a river to save the life of another who is in danger; thus those were not condemned who began to navigate in the air not without great danger.

On mutilation. Nor do we have dominion over a part of our person or our own body, which we have denied to be ours over the whole. Wherefore direct mutilation is intrinsically illicit. But mutilation is properly had when by cutting off some organic function or some use of members is suppressed. Therefore castration is mutilation, but circumcision is not, nor some accommodation of the body in a manner which is commonly judged to contribute to beauty: as if there is a custom of removing a certain extremity of the nose or ear. And light matter also is given, as if someone uselessly removes from himself one or another tooth.

Nevertheless direct mutilation will be lawful for saving the whole body or human life, because a part says order to the whole. Wherefore it is lawful to amputate a member lest the whole body be infected; it is lawful for someone to amputate his own arm by which he is bound to a chain, in order to flee a fire. The same seems to have to be permitted if the connection is extrinsic, for example that someone free himself from harsh servitude, that someone redeem death intended for him unless he make himself maimed in hand. For the same reason they admit that a virgin may disfigure her own face lest she be violated.

No one can tolerate castration for preserving chastity or conquering temptations, because that remedy is not necessary for that end and is often unfit. But if a man could be freed by a similar operation from an unusual and morbid force of concupiscence, we would judge that the operation, with another better way excluded, could then be done honestly. Wherefore, if in very truth by vasectomy someone is going to arrive at a just temperament, it seems to us that he can consent to the operation ¹. But it is utterly to be disapproved that public power impose an operation of this kind upon harmless men but weak in body or dull of mind, lest the less strong or those less strong in mind be propagated.

Female castration also is altogether to be condemned when performed for this end, that afterward the conjugal life may be exercised without danger of a harmful pregnancy.

Nor does the practice which once existed of castrating consenting boys seem to be praised or approved, that they might preserve a boyish voice and thus be able to take part in a singing profitable to themselves and not useless to the Church. For that is not necessary to the Church, since true adolescents can fulfill those parts in mixed choirs; but for men there are other profitable arts at hand. And how can boys give valid assent to an irreparable mutilation whose force escapes them? Yet because there is question of preserving the voice, St. Alphonsus, L. 3, n. 371, judged the more benign opinion not improbable.

¹ Observe that we speak merely conditionally, and pronounce nothing concerning the truth of the condition. For there is no lack of one who thinks that rather the opposite effect is to be expected from this "operation, which leaves the interior secretion untouched."

Care of health. We are forbidden directly to harm health itself, and we must preserve life safe by ordinary means. It is not doubted that parvity of matter can be had here. Wherefore:

1. Excesses in food and drink by which health is indeed injured, but not proximately and notably, even if they are grave against temperance, are not gravely opposed to piety or charity toward oneself.

The insane appetites for morphine, opium smoke (in China), cannabis smoke (in Africa among barbarians and Mohammedans), and, more recently, after the war, the taking of cocaine, which are so harmful to health that they prepare public calamities, are to be reproved with a much more severe note. Wherefore not a few laws have deservedly prohibited, by severe sanctions, either the abuse of opium, or hemp, or the sale of cocaine without a physician's order. Individual uses will not be able to be condemned of grave sin, but already in the individual cases there is had the danger of grave abuse and of a habit which will scarcely be able to be conquered. By diffusing, also and especially among adolescents and youths, the contrary spirit of mortification, these sensualities will best be forestalled.

2. It is lawful, yet not from the intention of shortening life, to exercise a useful art which is harmful to health. But if another way of making the things is available, this must be employed.

3. Because exterior penances have the immediate utility of taming the passions more, and thence, on account of several spiritual ends, both one's own and others', are holily employed, it is lawful to wear down the body by vigils and penances, even if some shortening of life and remote loss follows from this. And similarly, on account of an immediately useful effect, in vehement temptation it will be lawful to inflict a wound upon oneself from which blood may burst forth, provided the injury is reasonable and, with attention to the temptation, expedient. Yet it is wicked to use those chastisements which render someone unequal to fulfilling his office, or which notably or not remotely accelerate death. Indeed immoderate penances and abstinences can excite the body and increase temptations. And a prudent director will prevent also every bodily vexation which becomes suspect of someone's "Masochism" or painful lubricity.

4. For avoiding death no one is compelled to use costly and exquisite medicine, or, with domicile left behind, to seek healthier air outside the fatherland, or to conserve life by extraordinary and too hard means, e.g. the cutting off of a leg. Indeed they excuse the virgin who flees the hand of a physician or surgeon more than death. Yet it seems better to form such persons to reasonable command of themselves, lest they be struck down by terrors of this kind. - A father or Superior can command a less grave operation to be undergone.

5. A healthy Carthusian who lacks other foods, lest he perish from hunger, can and must take meats; but they probably permit that a sick Carthusian, with extreme danger of life, preserve his abstinence. For here they say there intervenes the reason of the common good, i.e. the strength of religious discipline; which reason is lacking in the rarer case of accidental need. To this add that life is connected by a much more certain bond with the only food which is at hand for a healthy man than with such quality of food as a sick man may take.

You ask what must be said concerning the use of hypnotic suggestion.

Whether a special sleep is admitted, or whether it is denied to exist, the hypnotic state designates the condition of a person who shows himself very docile to another's commands, to execute hypnotic suggestions either then or afterward. Is his obedience altogether blind and absolute, so that he is ready to do all things? This today is rather denied; but they say there are certain things from which the mind of a hypnotized person too much recoils for him to wish to perpetrate them; indeed they add that several ridiculous things, or even things bloody in appearance, are not obtained except because the hypnotized person is more or less conscious of the fiction. Very many persons, of both sexes, can be placed in that state; yet some more easily and more profoundly than others, so that there are those who, affected by nervous disease, narrate or do things which in very truth can move admiration. Finally, even outside that state, unless it has been done honestly and prudently, hypnotized persons remain under a servile dependence, as they say, on him who hypnotized them.

Concerning these phenomena a threefold question is raised: 1. concerning the moral imputation of actions which happen in the hypnotic state; and we previously denied that those actions are morally imputable in themselves, at least as to grave guilt. - 2. concerning the honesty of the consent by which a person allows himself to be cast into the hypnotic state. And because it is unlawful rashly to abdicate one's liberty into another's hands, because hypnotic usages can harm health not a little and easily disturb the phantasy and mind, such consent is not honestly given without a grave cause and due precautions. And, as much as can be done, care must be taken that liberty remain substantially intact, and that no enduring power over the person be permitted to the hypnotizer ¹. With due precautions, sufficient reason will be given by a bodily or mental illness to be cured, excessive passions to be moderated, and also scientific studies judged useful by those truly skilled.

Without these precautions, the one consenting derogates from charity toward himself; but he who "hypnotizes" a non-consenting person, as one who harms his health, is proved to have violated the fifth precept.

Wherefore, by laws such as the Belgian law of May 30, 1892, exhibitions of "hypnotized" persons are prudently punished, and also the very use of hypnotism upon the insane or minors when performed by those who are not physicians or have not obtained a special license of the government.

¹ This difference exists between the sleep of a hypnotized person, whether it be called special or be held as merely common, and drunkenness: that, after awaking, he immediately becomes master of himself, while the drunken man of himself remains stupid or dull until he has digested the intoxicating drink.

Canonical sanctions. From c. 985, 5: "Those who mutilated themselves or others or attempted to take life away from themselves are irregular from delict"; - from c. 1240: "they are deprived of ecclesiastical burial unless before death they have given some signs of penitence... 3. Those who killed themselves by deliberate counsel"; - from c. 2350, § 2: Those who laid hands upon themselves, if death did not follow, "are to be barred from legitimate ecclesiastical acts and, if they are clerics, are to be suspended for a time to be determined by the Ordinary, and are to be removed from benefices or offices having the care of souls annexed in the internal or external forum."

N.B. Concerning the obligation of working, it was said in the first part, I, 488.

1. Because in ourselves we must reverence those from whom we draw our origin, we violate piety itself by acts by which we violate our nature: which happens in every grave sin, especially by the lustful abuse of one's own body. But the greatest impiety is committed by suicide.

2. For directly bringing violence upon oneself is to act against love toward oneself, since, as far as in oneself lies, one denies to oneself the fundamental good of life and further perfection, while one violently departs from the state of probation; besides, by taking life away from oneself, one removes the fundamental condition of every service, and thus practically casts aside the essential dependence of the creature under God; one contemns the divine order manifested by the inclination implanted in every creature toward being; and one radically denies the offices owed to human society itself. This also holds concerning death sought by starvation.

3. Nevertheless it is lawful, on account of a proportionate cause, actively to permit one's own death by an action with which the probable or even most certain danger of death is joined. This is lawful for the soldier who sinks a ship useful to the enemy, in which he is being carried, lest it be captured; for a virgin who leaves a very high tower lest she be violated; for him who in shipwreck yields boats to others. It is lawful for a guilty man not to flee; nevertheless he does not seem, even when public power commands it, to be able to kill himself.

4. Nor is it lawful to seek private or common utility from the very danger of death as such; but if in an attempt positively dangerous, or in the refusal of such food, e.g. of heretics, there is present, independent of the danger, a utility of sufficient moment, the thing becomes honest and will sometimes be commendable.

5. Direct mutilation also is intrinsically illicit, unless it is done for defending the whole body or for saving life.

6. We are forbidden directly to harm health; wherefore excesses in food and drink are to be blamed at least venially; but to exercise a useful art necessarily harmful to health is not prohibited of itself. By a similar, indeed by a superior, reason of utility, exterior penances by which no necessary good is impeded are made honest.

The excessive desires for morphine, opium smoke, cannabis, and cocaine are more gravely to be blamed and seasonably restrained, since they prepare or induce not a few private and public evils.

7. We must preserve life by ordinary, not extraordinary, means.

8. The office of at once guarding one's own liberty and health forbids anyone, without sufficient reason, e.g. of curing disease or of truly scientific study, and without due precautions by which, e.g., enduring alien rule may be avoided, to allow himself to be cast into a hypnotic state. And otherwise the one hypnotizing would violate the fifth precept.

9. By ecclesiastical penalties, c. 985, 5; 1240; 2350, § 2, the act and attempt of suicide are punished.

Above, n. 6, when there was discussion concerning the object of ownership, it was proved that useful ownership of his body indeed belongs to man, but not absolute ownership. For man is, as it were, the steward of God, and therefore he commits injury toward God if he abuses his body or destroys it. But strictly speaking the suicide does not commit injury against his own body, since injury is always toward another and not toward oneself. Suicide (and the same holds of every homicide) is either direct or indirect. It is called direct when it is directly both intended and follows from an action freely placed. But it is called indirect when it is not intended, but is foreseen as going to follow from an action placed, which nevertheless does not directly cause death but only induces a most grave danger of death. Therefore in direct suicide (say the same of homicide and the procuring of abortion) the end both of the work and of the worker is death to be inflicted; but in indirect suicide neither the end of the work nor the end of the worker is death.

112. Principle 1. Direct suicide, done by private authority, is always a most grave sin.

Thus all Catholics teach against the Stoics, Epicureans, and several modern non-Catholics.

Proof. The sin of suicide is most strictly prohibited by law a) divine, b) natural, c) ecclesiastical.

a) In the fifth precept of the Decalogue divine law inculcates: "You shall not kill."

b) By a threefold reason direct suicide injures natural right itself;⁷⁵ for it is against charity toward oneself, violates the rights of the human community, and violates the rights of God himself. Therefore suicide first injures charity toward oneself. For each person ought to love himself, and from this love there arises the most vehement inclination of preserving oneself and resisting death. Hence suicide is something unnatural and injuring charity toward oneself. Moreover, it does injury to human society. For every man ought to be a useful member of human society. But by departing from life by his own motion, a man can now bring no utility to society. Therefore he commits injury. Finally, suicide is very injurious to God, who gave life to man and continually conserves it, and therefore is the perfect owner of every human life. Wherefore St. Paul says very well: "For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For whether we live, we live to the Lord; or whether we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."⁷⁶ But he who destroys his own life by suicide destroys the property of God and therefore inflicts grave injury upon God;⁷⁷ to him alone belongs the authoritative judgment of life and death, according to that saying: "You are, O Lord, he who has power of life and death."⁷⁸

c) Suicide is gravely prohibited by ecclesiastical law, which, as a penalty for so great a crime, forbids the body of a suicide to be buried in a sacred place or Mass or other liturgical suffrages to be celebrated for him.⁷⁹ But these ecclesiastical penalties are not incurred a) if the suicide was committed from madness or another cause impeding the use of reason; b) if the suicide gave signs of repentance before he expired; c) if the crime was wholly occult, lest the reputation of the survivors be violated; d) if there was doubt whether death arose from suicide, or whether the suicide was committed from madness. He who attempted suicide is irregular,⁸⁰ is barred from legitimate ecclesiastical acts, and incurs other penalties if he is a cleric.⁸¹

But it is said that suicide done by private authority is a most grave sin. For either from divine authority or sometimes from public authority suicide would be lawful. It is plain that God can command suicide to some man; for he himself is the supreme owner of life and death. But whether in reality God ever gave such a precept is not certainly established. For the deeds which are read in the lives of the saints (e.g., St. Apollonia, St. Pelagia, St. Sophronia) do not certainly prove that a divine precept was present. Those saints most certainly had the best intention, but through invincible ignorance they could have done something which objectively was illicit.⁸²

But could someone kill himself by command of public authority? E.g., can someone justly condemned to death by poison or hanging himself take the poison or hang himself? This case occurred in the East, and Socrates, condemned to death, is said to have obeyed the law of the republic and himself taken poison.⁸³ Billuart⁸⁴ and St. Alphonsus⁸⁵ deny (and call their opinion the more common), but it is not certainly established that this is intrinsically evil; wherefore it would be lawful for one justly condemned to death to employ this mode of dying when the supreme judge commands it. "For if the accused can open his mouth so that poison may be poured into it, so also he can draw it up with his hands, and so also he can transfix himself with a sword. For then the judge constitutes the accused as executioner of himself." Yet this is cruel and not very becoming.

Scholion. On The Principal Causes Of Suicide. In our times suicides become more frequent from day to day. The fundamental cause of this mournful experience seems to be the defect of faith creeping in more and more. For it is impossible that a man well conscious of the punishments of Gehenna (which he will certainly suffer through all eternity if with full advertence and deliberation he commits suicide) would not prefer to tolerate all the pains of this world rather than commit suicide. Hence suicides also happen much more frequently among unbelievers than among Catholics.⁸⁶ Another cause of suicides is books and theaters, in which suicide is very often glorified and therefore commended. Priests should not omit to deter the people from the enormous crime of suicide.

⁷⁵ St. Thomas, S. theol. 2, 2, q. 64, a. 5.

⁷⁶ Rom. 14, 7 sq.

⁷⁷ Cf. S. theol. 2, 2, q. 64, a. 5, where also the excuses which are sometimes brought forward for suicide are refuted.

⁷⁸ Wis. 16, 13.

⁷⁹ Rit. Rom. tit. 6, c. 2, n. 3. Code of Canon Law c. 1240, 3.

⁸⁰ Code of Canon Law c. 985, 4.

⁸¹ L. c. 2350, § 2.

⁸² Cf. Lessius l. 2, c. 9, n. 23, cited by Noldin, De praeceptis n. 327.

⁸³ Cf. Plato, Phaedo (LVII): τι χρή ποιεῖν.

⁸⁴ De iust. diss. 14, a. 4, dico 4.

⁸⁵ Theol. mor. l. 3, n. 369.

⁸⁶ Paulsen rightly says: "Suicide is, as a rule, the unbeautiful end of an unbeautiful life" (System der Ethik II, 120).

113. Principle 2. Indirect suicide is not licit unless a proportionately grave cause is present.

It is explained. An action indirectly causing death is not intrinsically evil, and therefore, when a proportionately grave cause comes in, it is licit in the same way in which an indirectly voluntary evil is permitted. But what is a proportionately grave cause must be prudently estimated in individual cases. The nearer and more certainly the action is going to induce death, the greater the cause required. Among causes permitting indirect suicide are enumerated the public good and the spiritual good. For it is certain that a man can and ought to expose his life to the greatest danger if the public good demands this. Thus soldiers with evident danger of life ought to fight in battle; pastors ought to administer the sacraments, even if on account of a raging epidemic they expose themselves to mortal contagion. The spiritual good also, and notably the good of virtue, is an excusing cause. Hence missionaries laudably set out into foreign and unhealthy regions with manifest danger of death; religious sisters can serve the sick laboring under plague. If the danger of death is not so proximate, even a lighter cause can excuse. Hence it is lawful, e.g., for workers to blow glass, to gild metals, to work in sulfur mines, etc., with danger of notably shortening life. Nevertheless he always sins who from a futile reason exposes or abbreviates his life, e.g., men who from vainglory fight in a duel, some tightrope walkers, those prolonging a fast for a very long time (for the sake of mere experiment or wager). Likewise those who hasten death for themselves by gluttony, by immoderate passions, by morphinism; those who undertake altogether unusual labors without sufficient reason; those who refuse to take even ordinary remedies for preserving or recovering health.⁸⁷

⁸⁷ Cf. Billuart, De iure et iust. diss. 10, a. 3.

114. Authors raise two questions here: 1. Is it lawful to kill oneself in order to avoid a certain and harsher death? St. Alphonsus responds:⁸⁸ "Directly to kill oneself is never lawful ... it is lawful to kill oneself indirectly: for instance, if someone throws himself out through a window in order to escape a fire; especially if there is some hope of escaping death. Thus teach Busenbaum, Lugo with Lessius, Continuator Tournely, and Sporer. And Elbel permits this even to accused persons detained in prison, for escaping a certain sentence of death, or even perpetual prison." Whatever may be the case concerning this indirect killing, which seems to be licit, since there it is not a question of death itself to be inflicted upon oneself, but rather of exposing oneself to the greatest danger of death, nevertheless the opinion defended by Elbel does not seem able to be sustained, unless it is a question only of undergoing the danger of death, but not of certain death itself. Otherwise those suicides which happen rather often, which evildoers condemned to perpetual labor in prisons commit, would also be licit. And indeed no one will sanely say this. For the rest, from the very words of Elbel it appears that he speaks only of danger of death. For he says: "Even in these circumstances they [soldiers] do not intend to kill themselves, but only by flight to seek liberation from the squalor of perpetual prison, which to many seems, not without merit, more intolerable than death itself; therefore if death follows from such flight besides their intention, they must by no means be judged to have intended it, but rather to have held themselves permissively in order to it."⁸⁹

⁸⁸ Theol. mor. l. 3, n. 367.

⁸⁹ De homicid. n. 16, ed. Bierbaum.

115. 2. Can a virgin choose death rather than her own violation? a) It is certain that a virgin cannot directly kill herself in order to avoid violation, e.g., by transfixing her heart with a sword. It is also the express opinion of St. Thomas,⁹⁰ saying: "Similarly, it is also not lawful for a woman to kill herself, lest she be corrupted by another; because she ought not to commit in herself the greatest crime, which is the killing of herself, in order to avoid the lesser crime of another; for it is not the crime of a woman violated by force, if consent is absent, because the body is not stained except from consent of the mind, as Lucia said." Hence the things which are had in the Decree of Gratian⁹¹ from St. Jerome,⁹² "In persecutions it is not lawful to perish by one's own hand, apart from where chastity is endangered, but to submit the neck to the one striking," are either to be piously explained or to be abandoned. Then b) it is also certain that a virgin in that case can flee with evident danger of death, e.g., by throwing herself from a high window; but c) it is not certain whether a virgin ought rather to allow herself to be killed than violated, e.g., when the aggressor threatens her with death unless she permits intercourse. Several authors affirm,⁹³ because, since the woman can impede intercourse, if she rests induced by fear, then her cooperation becomes truly moral and voluntary. Other theologians⁹⁴ deny, provided that the virgin bears herself merely passively and the danger of consent is absent. The reason is that in that case the violation is something merely physical; and just as a virgin can, for recovering health, permit physical violation through a surgical operation, so at least on account of the most eminent danger of death she can permit that violation through extorted intercourse. Certainly in the second case the virgin provides material and proximate cooperation in the sin of the aggressor, and therefore a much greater cause is required than in the case of a surgical operation; but nevertheless that aggressor is already in heart guilty of deflowering before the external work perpetrated, and besides he would become guilty of both internal and external homicide if the virgin did not bear herself permissively. Therefore the merely passive permission of the virgin helps rather than harms the soul of the aggressor. St. Augustine⁹⁵ also seems to favor this opinion.

⁹⁰ S. theol. 2, 2, q. 64, a. 5 ad 3.

⁹¹ c. 11, C 23, Q. 5.

⁹² Comm. in Jonah l. 1, n. 402 (Migne, Patr. lat. 25, 1129).

⁹³ Lugo, Salmanticenses, Azor, Bonacina, etc., cited by St. Alphonsus, l. c. n. 368.

⁹⁴ Navarrus, Toletus, Soto, Schindler.

⁹⁵ De civ. Dei l. 1, c. 18.

116. On Self-Mutilation. By almost the same right by which suicide is prohibited, mutilation of oneself is also prohibited. For just as man does not have full ownership of his life, so neither can he dispose concerning his members except for the uses determined by God. But because the parts are for the sake of the whole, it is lawful to cut off a member if this is necessary for saving the whole bodily life. Thus all theologians teach with St. Thomas.⁹⁶ Therefore it is lawful to submit oneself to surgical operations when they are truly useful or necessary for preserving health. Moreover, it is lawful to cut off a bound hand, if this is necessary for taking flight and thus for escaping death.⁹⁷ But for other ends mutilation cannot be done licitly, because God never, either explicitly or implicitly, conceded such a right to men. Hence it is not lawful for an adolescent to mutilate himself in order to escape military service, nor for a poor man in order to obtain greater alms, nor to do emasculation or castration for preserving chastity, as Origen is narrated to have done.⁹⁸ Hence deservedly the Church has established the penalty of irregularity against those who have castrated themselves or have otherwise mutilated themselves or others.⁹⁹

On Artificial Sterilization. In former times castration of boys came into use for preserving a boyish voice. This castration indeed was held licit by some authors, if danger of life was absent and it was not done to boys unwilling.¹⁰⁰ There is no leisure to refute this opinion and practice, today deservedly obsolete. In our times the so-called artificial sterilization rages more and more from day to day; it can very easily be obtained not only by vasectomy but also by Roentgen rays (X-rays); but it is usually employed for recovering health, for avoiding generation, and for other ends. But since this sterilization is true bodily mutilation (of the ovaries or testicles), it is not morally licit unless for curing diseased organs and for obtaining the health of the whole body. Therefore it is not lawful to employ it, e.g., for preventing the generation of numerous offspring, for preventing a man altogether depraved from transmitting his very bad habits into offspring by generating.¹⁰¹

⁹⁶ S. theol. 2, 2, q. 65, a. 1.

⁹⁷ Several authors (Lugo, Lessius, Molina, Salmanticenses, Billuart, Lehmkuhl, Marc, Aertnys) more probably think that someone can mutilate himself in order to avoid death unjustly threatened by a tyrant. Wherefore if, e.g., a husband says to an adulterer caught in the act: either castrate yourself or I shall kill you, the adulterer could castrate himself in order to avoid the death threatened by the husband. I am unable to grasp how that opinion is probable, since such mutilation is manifest and proximate cooperation in the sin of another.

⁹⁸ Cf. S. theol. 2, 2, q. 65, a. 1 ad 3.

⁹⁹ Code of Canon Law c. 985, 5.

¹⁰⁰ Cf. St. Alphonsus, Theol. mor. l. 3, n. 374.

¹⁰¹ Pius XI, encyclical Casti connubii, Dec. 31, 1930 (Act. Ap. Sed. XXII, 230), and S. C. S. Off., Mar. 21, 1931 (Act. Ap. Sed. XXIII, 118).

117. Scholion. The desire of death can be something 1. licit; 2. illicit; 3. imperfect. This desire is licit if it arises from a good motive, namely because someone desires to be joined with God, to be no longer able to sin, etc. In this sense St. Paul teaches that it is much better to have the desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ than to remain in the flesh.¹⁰² But it is illicit if it arises from a wicked motive, e.g., if someone with rebellion against the divine will wishes death for himself, if someone from impatience now no longer wishes to tolerate this life. Rarely, however, is this desire of death gravely illicit, because often it is not so voluntary and serious. Finally, the desire of death is something morally imperfect if someone so abhors some earthly evil, for example grave illness, incarceration, a very hard state of life, etc., that he prefers bodily death rather than to sustain that evil. Although such a desire is not gravely sinful, because already in Sacred Scripture it is said: "Death is better than a bitter life,"¹⁰³ nevertheless it is something imperfect and a venial sin, because by patiently tolerating such very grave evils of earthly life a man will have a precious reward in heaven, which he loses by desiring death.

There are some men who, even in the ordinary distresses of this life, often exclaim: Would that I were dead! Would that I were in the tomb! etc. Exclamations of this kind certainly are to be avoided and are objectively illicit, but often they are semi-deliberate acts and not seriously willed; hence they are either no sin or a venial sin.

¹⁰² Cf. Phil. 1, 23-24.

¹⁰³ Eccli. 30, 17.

St. Alphonsus, III, 366-375; ed. G., I, p. 622; H. Ap., VIII; authors cited at the beginning; Krose, Selbstmord, Erg.-Hefte, 90 and 91; Hauviller, du Suicide; Tanquerey, II, p. 123; Linz. Quart. Schr., 1909, p. 55; Willems, III, p. 251.

Mutilation of one's own body is referred to suicide. Hence we shall treat: 1. of killing; 2. of mutilation of oneself.

In these things it is presupposed that every man is held to preserve life and the integrity of members. For life is given by God so that we may use it in order to the life of the future age. Therefore whatever is necessary for these things is imposed on us. Yet by no right is it required that we use a difficult, extraordinary remedy, or one from which we greatly shrink (III, 372). - Indeed let there be honor to the physician (Eccli., 38, 1-4), but from this it does not follow that he sins who in a light infirmity does not summon him. Much less will he sin who rejects a dangerous operation, unless goods of the greatest moment must be saved and success is morally certain.

753. Principles. I. It is never licit, without divine authority or certain inspiration of God, directly to kill oneself. This is indeed repugnant to charity toward oneself, and is injurious both to God, who alone is the direct and absolute lord of human life (cf. n. 852), and to society, which through suicide is deprived of one of its members. This is positively prohibited by that general precept: Thou shalt not kill. Cf. also Rom., XIV, 7, 8. - There accedes the authority of the ecclesiastical precept by which it is established that suicides, concerning whose crime there is certainty, are deprived of ecclesiastical burial (cf. n. 1387).

We have said: Without divine authority or inspiration; for with this, it is most certainly licit to bring death upon oneself. Thus those holy virgins who in times of persecutions handed themselves over to death are not only excused, but are celebrated by the Church with the highest praises (H. Ap., VIII, 1). - Yet that killing is never praised which is accomplished by one's own motion. If it is accomplished from invincible ignorance, it can and must be excused.

You will ask. Whether one condemned to death can, from the precept of the judge, kill himself by sword, rope, or poison?

Resp. Some affirm, probably, because in such a case the guilty person by legitimate authority, that is, by the judge, and therefore by God, is constituted executioner of himself. - But others, according to the more common opinion, deny it; because such an action is intrinsically evil, which therefore neither can the judge command nor the guilty person execute (III, 369; ed. G., p. 625). Therefore the obligation of obeying will not be present; but to obey would not be illicit.

754. II. Sometimes it is licit to concur indirectly in the killing of oneself or in lethal wounding. The precept of conserving life, as being affirmative, does not always oblige; and besides, it is licit to posit an honest or at least indifferent cause, from which, besides the good effect, an evil effect follows, as we said n. 315. Indeed, sometimes an obligation is given of sacrificing life, if charity or justice requires it (III, 366).

But the JUST CAUSES of permitting one's own death are the following, as St. Alphonsus notes (III, 366-372):

1. The common good. Thus a soldier, even if he knows he is about to die, can, indeed is held to, persist in his station, sink or burn his own ship lest the enemy obtain possession of it, set fire to powder to overthrow a hostile tower, etc. Cf. 1 Macc., VI, 43. Similarly, it is licit to throw oneself before a weapon or blow to preserve the life of a prince, to have care of those infected by disease in time of plague, etc.²

2. Virtue to be exercised. Faith: martyrs of Christ can choose not to flee, and voluntarily undergo death. Justice: a malefactor can choose not to go out of prison, even if a way to flight lies open; one condemned to perish by hunger can abstain from food secretly offered. Chastity: a virgin, lest she be violated, can indeed not kill herself, but can expose herself to the danger of death, both to avoid danger of consent, and also to preserve the sole integrity of the flesh, as the Doctors hold not improbably (III, n. 368). Charity toward oneself: it is licit to undergo a dangerous operation for ending very grave torments, provided it offers a founded hope of a more tranquil life. But it would be illicit to expose oneself to great danger of death so that only deformity of the body be removed. Cf. Genicot, Cas. consc., I, p. 148. Charity toward neighbor: an innocent traveler can permit himself to be killed by an unjust aggressor, lest that assassin die in sin. Likewise, in shipwreck someone can yield a plank not yet occupied by himself, indeed even one occupied by himself, provided he is able to do this without casting himself into the sea while ignorant of the art of swimming.³ Here advert that he who occupied it first is not only not held to admit the other, but can impede him, unless the plank suffices for both (cf. Vind. Alph., P. III, q. 2, fin.). Likewise someone can throw himself before a weapon or blow to conserve the life of a friend. Indeed, if a friend has been unjustly condemned to death, he can offer himself to be killed for him. We say if unjustly; for if justly, he would allure him to repeat sins, or he himself would sin against vindicative justice.

3. A more certain death to be avoided. Thus, with a fire raging, if no other way is at hand by which you may avoid so atrocious a death, you can leap from a window, cast yourself into the sea, with some hope of saving yourself. The same is licit for guilty persons detained in prison, for avoiding a certain sentence of death, or even perpetual imprisonment (Bucceroni, I, n. 718).

4. Difficulty of an extraordinary or too harsh remedy. As we have already indicated, a remedy of this kind is held as morally impossible, nor with such rigor, by the consent of all, does the positive precept concerning conserving life oblige, unless the reason of the common good intervenes. Extraordinary remedies are, for example, very costly medicines, or cutting of members, or change of domicile or fatherland; for a virgin, the examination and touching of a physician or surgeon, if namely this is most grave to her, and she shrinks from it more than from death itself. Nevertheless she could permit herself to be touched, indeed would be held to permit it, so that she might be cared for by another woman (III, 372).

5. Necessity of exercising an art. Whence artisans do not sin who ascend upon the roofs of buildings and expose themselves to various dangers where there is need; nor blacksmiths, who daily lessen life for themselves by handling fire. On the contrary, daring men sin gravely who from rash wager and vain glory cast themselves without cause into grave risks, by ascending on high, letting themselves down, bearing heavier burdens, etc. Likewise tightrope walkers, who play by rope in high places with probable danger of life. But whether they sin gravely who from a cause licit of itself too trustingly are engaged in dangerous occupations cannot be so easily defined. Use, character, caution, etc., can effect that for them the danger is remote or none (Konings, n. 463, 6). According to the norm of these principles let the reader judge those who tame wild beasts, cooperate proximately in bull contests, ascend airships. Ami du Cl., 1913, p. 65.

755. Concerning the shortening of life. Man, since he is not the lord of his own life, also cannot, without sufficient reason, shorten his own life. To intend the acceleration of death would be a mortal sin; to foresee the shortening of life and posit its remote cause, although a shortening of some years is probable, is no sin, indeed sometimes meritorious, if the cause is just; only a venial sin if a just cause were lacking.

From these things conclude: 1. It is an act of virtue to afflict the flesh moderately by vigils and hunger. Say the same of him who afflicts himself with graver mortifications, provided he does this by the counsel of a prudent prelate or confessor.

2. He sins venially who eats, drinks, smokes tobacco, uses morphine or opium inordinately, converses and plays with a syphilitic person, although, admonished by a physician, he is conscious of danger to health and shortening of life. Cf. Genicot, Cas. consc., p. 151 seqq.; Antonelli, II, n. 150, de Corpore castigando.

Concerning desire of death. To desire death from a motive of virtue, for example so that we may be joined with God, sin no more, etc., is an act of virtue, provided there is conformity with the divine will. But to desire death on account of the smallest troubles, provided the required advertence is present, which for the most part is lacking, is of itself a mortal sin. But if death is wished because the hardships are so great that life appears more bitter than death itself (Eccli., 30, 17), no sin would be committed (II, 30).

Concerning the custody of virginity in danger of death. Above we said that a virgin can expose herself to the danger of death, even for preserving the integrity of the flesh. The question is whether a virgin is held rather to permit herself to be killed than to be violated. St. Alphonsus responds (III, 368): Speculatively speaking, a virgin placed in these straits probably can

conduct herself permissively, provided she positively resists by the will, and danger of consent is absent: for she offers only material cooperation, which the danger of death excuses.

In practice, however, positive resistance, and therefore acceptance of death, is to be advised, at least on account of the danger of consent, which can easily be present in that permission. - A fortiori, positive resistance is to be advised, indeed imposed (whatever Genicot says, Cas. consc., I, p. 7), if there is question of preserving virginity in danger only of a grave evil, for example grave beating or wounding; because, practically, on the one side, this positive resistance alone can remove the danger of consent and restrain the boldness of youths; but, on the other side, the excellent good of virginity must be preserved even with grave inconvenience. Cf. n. 736 and 778.

756. Principles. I. Mutilation of oneself is illicit of itself. For man possesses absolute dominion neither over life nor over the body.

The sin will be grave or light according to the matter. Concerning irregularity contracted by reason of mutilation, see n. 1946.

II. Mutilation sometimes becomes licit for preserving the good of the whole. The reason is that, although mutilation is against the particular order, nevertheless it is required by nature or the universal order. This universal order requires that whatever is lower be ordered to what is higher. St. Thomas, 2.2, q. 65, a. 1 ad 1; St. Alph., III, n. 373.

III. This mutilation is licit for a private man. Reason: a part of the body is not like the life of man, to which the other things that are in man are ordered, and over which, therefore, man cannot have power (St. Thomas, ibid., ad 2). Therefore, with the conditions placed as above, a private man can accomplish mutilation by his own action.

Hence: 1. It is licit for him to cut off for himself a hand bound by a chain, in order to flee a fire, or to avoid death to be inflicted by a beast or tyrant (Lugo, de Just., disp. 10, n. 22); it is licit for a virgin to disfigure herself, in order to turn procurers away from herself; it is licit by a small mutilation to render oneself fit for a lucrative art.

2. It is not licit to castrate oneself, nor to permit this to be done to oneself by another, for preserving chastity and overcoming temptations. The reason is that such a remedy does not remove temptations, and besides it deprives one of a power of the greatest moment. Cf. Antonelli, I, n. 287. Otherwise one must speak of cutting off the organ of pleasure in a woman (Lehmkuhl, I, 735).

3. It is not licit to castrate boys, even consenting ones, that they may be useful for singing. Indeed not a few permit this from custom, and from the good that comes to those boys themselves; but among most the negative opinion has prevailed; for conservation of the voice is not a good of such moment that what nature so greatly reproves may be licit (III, 374). Cf. Benedict XIV (de Syn., l. XI, c. 7), who learnedly proves that the Supreme Pontiffs never approved the castration of singers.

4. Likewise, it is not licit to exercise grave cruelty upon oneself on account of private advantage, for example for a young man, so that, by help of a grave and lasting sickness, he may obtain immunity from military service; for a poor man, so that, on account of a mutilated body, he may obtain more abundant alms.

5. A woman cannot permit her ovaries to be cut out, unless there is question of conserving life. To be sure, in our times the operation is easily accomplished; but from this it does not become licit (Antonelli, II, n. 277).

756 bis. This new mode of mutilation consists in this, that in a man the seminal ducts are divided by a very brief operation throughout in the scrotum: from this it happens that the man cannot procreate offspring, although he remains apt for copulation. This mutilation is temporary, if namely it happens (which, however, only a most skilled man can effect) that the divided parts of the ducts are joined together again.

They say that vasectomy can be sought or permitted by married persons for this end, that they may more freely enjoy the act of matrimony, without having to fear the burdens that would follow from new offspring. It is also imposed by public authority with this intention, that it may be guarded against lest unhealthy offspring be begotten by a man infected with disease.

Leaving aside for now the question whether vasectomy induces the impediment of impotence (concerning this matter in the treatise on Matrimony), let us see whether this operation is licit in itself.

Principles. I. Vasectomy constitutes grave mutilation. Reason: all organs that serve for the conservation of the species are conferred by the Creator for undertaking a grave function; therefore their conservation is of the greatest moment, and it is consonant with reason that all things that are more intimately connected with the procreation of life be withdrawn from the discretion and dominion of private persons.

II. Vasectomy is gravely illicit mutilation. The question is not whether vasectomy is licit, supposing that it must be done to restore or preserve the health of the body: the principles explained above (n. 756) are too clear. The question is whether, on account of the ends indicated above, notwithstanding the gravity of the mutilation, vasectomy can be called licit.

And one must respond: entirely in the negative, indeed that it is prohibited under grave sin. The reasons are: 1. Vasectomy sought by married persons serves for nothing except unbridled pleasure, and very often carries with it injury to the right of the other spouse. Besides, even if we suppose that vasectomy is therefore sought lest the woman suffer great inconveniences from a new childbirth, it will always be verified that these evils can be avoided by continence; therefore mutilation is not a necessary means.

2. Vasectomy imposed by public authority constitutes an aggression against the intimate goods of an innocent man, which were given to him by the Creator, so that the human species might rightly be propagated. The reason of the common good indeed avails against malefactors, who can be deprived of life or liberty; it avails also against those who can spread disease outwardly, and therefore it is right for lepers to be separated from others; nevertheless it does not avail against an innocent man who would wish to preserve his members and use his native right. Public authority indeed ought to consult the common good, but in those things that pertain to better being, the primary rights of private persons must not be injured. Cf. Nouv. Rev. Theol., vol. 42, p. 417; Wouters (ap. Nouv. Rev. Theol., vol. 43, p. 340); Gury-Ferreres, II, n. 856 ter; Ferreres, de Vasectomia duplici.

461. Principles. - I. It is never licit for anyone directly, that is, from intention and by his own authority, to kill himself. This is clear 1° from the divine precept: You shall not kill.² 2° From the natural law. For man does not have direct dominion over his body, nor over his life, but only useful dominion, since he does not have these from himself, but has received them from God and must render them back to God alone when He demands them. Therefore the suicide violates the supreme dominion of God by destroying a thing not his own. He also harms society, of which he is a part, as St. Thomas says.³

II. Without divine authority it is never lawful to posit an external act, tending of itself immediately to one's own destruction, unless that act has another good and immediate effect, which alone is intended, and a most grave reason urges that that good effect be obtained. The reason is that where the physical act, even of itself indifferent, has no other effect than suicide, it now becomes evil, since then there is present no reason by which the precept of conserving life and of guarding against the danger of death would cease. Therefore in any case whatever it is prohibited.

III. It is licit to concur indirectly in the killing of oneself, or to posit an action from which, beyond the intention, one's own death certainly follows, provided from that action there follows equally immediately some good which compensates the loss of life, and this alone is intended. Sometimes we are bound to this.

462. Questions. - Quaer. 1° Is it licit to set fire to a ship or fortress, so that the enemies may suffer grave damage, but with certain loss of one's own life?

Resp. In the affirmative, at least more probably; because it is expedient that public damage be avoided, or that the common good be procured, even with most certain damage of private persons. Lugo, Lessius, St. Alphonsus.¹

Quaer. 2° Can a virgin, in order to preserve chastity, expose herself to the danger of death?

Resp. In the affirmative, at least if death is not certainly going to follow; and this both on account of the love of chastity, and also (and this reason is valid for a woman in general, and not only for a virgin), on account of the danger of sin, which is often had in such an occasion. - Thus commonly. - Indeed, more probably still one must answer affirmatively, even if death is certainly going to follow, and there is not present a proximate danger of consent; because even the integrity of the body alone is very highly esteemed. - Laymann, St. Alphonsus,² etc.

Quaer. 3° Is a woman bound to permit herself to be killed rather than violated?

Resp. In the negative, probably, at least speaking speculatively, provided she resist with the will positively, and a proximate danger of consent be absent. The reason is that this permission is not formal cooperation in another's sin, but only material; and a just cause of permission is present, namely danger of death. Yet this practice is not to be counseled, on account of the danger of consent, which can easily be present in that permission.

Quaer. 4° Is it licit for an accused man to present himself before the judge, even if he must certainly be punished by death?

Resp. In the affirmative. Because that action is of itself indifferent, indeed even honorable; for in the case to will to die is equivalent to willing the order of justice; and just as because of a just cause it is licit to desire death for another, and even to procure it in a legitimate mode, so also for oneself. - Lugo, Lessius, St. Alphonsus.¹

463. You will resolve. - 1° Each one is bound to conserve life, since no one can cast away the gift of this life without sin, and it is equivalent not to conserve life and to take it away from oneself.

2° It is never licit to posit with the intention of killing oneself an action from which death, although only per accidens, is going to follow; because it is never licit to will a forbidden thing, and to reduce this will to act.

3° You are not bound to preserve life which is not necessary to the common good by remedies either extraordinary (for example, by expenses enormous for your condition), or bringing the greatest pain.² Note, however, that sections, or so-called surgical operations, are accomplished today with happier success than formerly, and scarcely without some pain, by the help of chloroform. Capellmann, Medicina Pastoralis, p. 20.

4° A virgin is not bound to suffer an operation by the hands of a physician, even if life is endangered, when on account of modesty this happens to be most grave for her, and casts into her a greater horror than death itself.³

5° It is never licit to macerate the body in order to shorten life, nor, even with such an end excluded, to ruin health gravely by immoderate and wholly indiscreet penances. Yet it is licit, from the virtue of penance, ordinarily to use grave things with a certain definite shortening of life; because, according to the common sentence of the Doctors, on account of merit, or the mortification of depraved nature, some loss of longer life can be contemned.⁴

6° Craftsmen do not sin who ascend over the roofs of buildings and expose themselves to various dangers, where there is need; nor blacksmiths, who daily diminish life for themselves by handling fire; the reason is that they do this from a reasonable cause. - On the contrary, bold men sin gravely who from rash wagering and vain glory cast themselves without cause into grave risks, by climbing high, by lowering themselves downward, by bearing heavier burdens, etc., etc. - But whether those sin who, from a cause licit of itself, work too confidently in dangerous occupations cannot so easily be defined. Custom, character, caution, etc., can bring it about that for them there is no danger, or only remote danger.

7° It is not licit to mutilate oneself, unless it is necessary for the conservation of the whole body; because man is not the master even of his members, but only their guardian, and whatever man is, the whole is God's, nor does he have any other dominion over his body except useful or indirect dominion.¹

8° It is not licit to mutilate oneself for a spiritual good, or for avoiding any sin whatever. For as St. Thomas says, "spiritual health can always be provided for otherwise than by the cutting off of a member, because sin is subject to the will. And therefore in no case is it licit to cut off a member for the sake of avoiding any sin whatever."²

9° More probably it is licit to cut off one's own hand bound by a chain in order to avoid death impending from a wild beast or a tyrant, or from fire; because the part ought to yield to the good of the whole man. - Lugo,³ Lacroix,⁴ Billuart, against others.

S. Th. II-II, q. 64, a. 5.

349. The killing of oneself is an action or omission apt to cause death; one kind is direct, another indirect. Direct is that which is intended in itself as an end or means, whether explicitly or implicitly, as when an action or omission can tend immediately to no other end; indirect is that which is not intended in itself, but is foreseen as likely to follow from some action or omission: thus a soldier about to fight foresees that death will probably follow from battle. Certainly one thing is to kill oneself or to inflict death on oneself; another is only to expose oneself to death or to its danger, or to do something else with danger of death, which, namely, can draw death along with itself. Now that indirect killing of oneself is licit, certain conditions being given and from a proportionately grave cause, there is no one who doubts; but there also have been those who have tried to legitimate direct killing of oneself or suicide itself properly so called, not only among the Greek philosophers, especially Stoics or Epicureans, considering it as an act of virtue, or as a means of fleeing the bitternesses of life, but also among more recent men, especially among positivists and materialists. From this it has happened that, faith decreasing, suicide has grown stronger day by day, the more so because in books and theaters its apology is undertaken. Catholic doctrine contradicts this.

350. Thesis I. Direct killing of oneself, intended in itself and by one's own authority, is a sin of itself grave from the whole genus, as being harmful not only to the individual, but also to society, and injurious to God.

It is said: a) by one's own authority, so that the case may be excluded both of him who, with God inspiring him, would kill himself, which certainly is licit, and of him who would do this because of a crime committed, with public authority commanding it, which we would not dare to condemn as certainly illicit;

b) grave of itself, because per accidens it can happen that someone in good faith judges there to be certain motives on account of which it would be licit to take away his own life;

c) from the whole genus, as being...: for by its nature it is always grave on account of a threefold motive, because it is harmful not only to the suicide himself, but also to society, and moreover injurious to the right of God. Under the first aspect it is not against justice but against charity toward oneself, under the second directly against legal justice, under the third against commutative justice.

But it is most strictly prohibited not only by natural law, but also by divine and ecclesiastical law.

It is proved directly: 1) It is against the natural law.

a) For it is harmful to the individual. Life is the greatest temporal good and the condition of all other goods, not only natural but also supernatural: the condition of merit for eternal life, the condition of progress in charity, the condition of penitence, the condition of progress and evolution in the moral and spiritual life; whence he who kills himself acts against love of self and against the natural inclination by which every being tends to the conservation of itself.

b) It is also harmful to society, which does not have dominion over our life but custody of it for its own utility. A part belongs to the whole, and every part, that which it is, is of the whole; but every man is part of society, into which he is inserted as a useful member, and thus that which he is, is of society; therefore he who kills himself deprives society of this utility of himself, while it is unwilling, and thus inflicts injury upon it.

c) Finally and especially it injures the right of God. For God is the author and therefore the owner of our life and body, and He has reserved this dominion to Himself, and has conceded to us only the use, after the manner of a deposit, according to His will, with the burden of guarding and preserving life. Therefore life is a certain good divinely given and subject to the power and judgment of God. Whence he who kills himself injures the right of God.

2. It is against divine law, which a) explicitly decrees: You shall not kill, which is to be understood not only of the killing of one's neighbor but also of the killing of oneself, since man ought to love his neighbor as himself. Whence Augustine, book I De Civ. Dei, c. 20: "It remains that we understand of man that which was said: You shall not kill. Not another, therefore not yourself. For he who kills himself kills nothing other than a man"; b) it also indicates the foundation of the precept, Deut. XXXII, 39: I will kill and I will make alive; and Wis. XVI, 13: You are, O Lord, who have power of life and death; hence c) it concludes: because as to life and death we are under the dominion of God, we must live and die for the Lord, according to that of the Apostle, Rom. XIV, 7-8: "For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For whether we live, we live to the Lord; whether we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."

3. It is against ecclesiastical law, according to which suicides are deprived of sacred burial and liturgical suffrages (can. 1240, 3°); yet these penalties are not incurred if sufficient use of reason was lacking in them or perhaps was lacking, if they gave signs of repentance, if there is doubt whether death arose from suicide, if the crime was entirely hidden, lest the reputation of survivors be violated. But those who have attempted suicide are irregular from delict (can. 985, 5°), are barred from legitimate ecclesiastical acts, and incur other penalties if they are clerics (can. 2350, § 2).

351. There is no assignable cause on account of which it is licit to kill oneself, but all the excuses which are brought forward are vain pretexts.

For a) the misery of this present life does not hold: the happiness for which we are destined is to be obtained only in the future life, for which the misery of the present age provides an occasion of greater merit or penitence; and it would be irrational, in order to avoid lesser miseries, to inflict on oneself the greatest, namely death. Nor b) intolerable disgrace to be undergone: killing is not a suitable means of recovering reputation or honor, and because of evil unjustly inflicted by another, it is not fitting to inflict a greater punishment on oneself. Nor c) virtue, especially chastity, to be preserved: the integrity of the flesh surely is not a good proportioned to death; but the integrity of the soul can be provided for otherwise, since, as temptation increases, resistance from the grace of God can increase. Besides, evils are not to be done so that goods may come about. Nor d) a useless life or one burdensome to others to be ended: everyone can be useful to others by laboring, helping, building up by good examples, or praying; but if he has been harmful to a private person or to society, he ought by the honesty of life to repair scandals or injustices.

These things St. Thomas already refuted in his own time, q. 64, a. 5, ad 3: "Man is constituted master of himself through free will; and therefore man can licitly dispose concerning himself as to those things which pertain to this life, which is ruled by man's free will. But the passage from this life to another happier one is not subject to man's free will, but to divine power; and therefore 1) it is not licit for man to kill himself, so that he may pass to a happier life. 2) Similarly also not so that he may escape any miseries of the present life, because the ultimate and most terrible of the evils of this life is death... And therefore to inflict death on oneself in order to escape other miseries of this life is to assume a greater evil for the avoidance of a lesser evil. 3) Similarly also it is not licit to kill oneself because of some sin committed, both because in this he harms himself most of all, because he takes away from himself the necessary time of penitence, and also because it is not licit to kill a malefactor except through the judgment of public power. 4) Similarly also it is not licit for a woman to kill herself lest she be corrupted by another, because she ought not to commit in herself the greatest crime, which is the killing of herself, in order to avoid the lesser crime of another: for it is not a crime of a woman violated by violence if consent is not present... But it is established that fornication or adultery is a lesser sin than homicide, and especially homicide of oneself, which is most grave, because it harms oneself, to whom one owes the greatest love; it is also most dangerous, because no time remains that it may be expiated through penitence. 5) Similarly also it is not licit for anyone to kill himself because of fear lest he consent to sin, because evils are not to be done so that goods may come, or so that evils may be avoided, especially lesser and less certain evils; for it is uncertain whether someone in the future will consent to sin: for God is able to free man from sin in whatever temptation supervenes."

From these things again the Catholic thesis is indirectly confirmed.

I. In order to solve the preceding questions rightly, it is necessary to recall certain principles of moral theology: namely, one from the general doctrine concerning human acts, and several other special principles from the particular matters concerning justice and charity.

III. From the doctrine concerning justice we know that man does not have dominion over the human body and life, but only its author, God, has it. Hence man cannot directly dispose of life, whether his own or another's, except according as it has been conceded to him by God. Now:

1. God has conceded this for the public good, but only to public authority, whether a) in a just war to be carried on by that authority, or b) for punishing evildoers by that authority, and perhaps c) for a private good to individual men for defending life against unjust aggression, although this rather seems to be, and is better called, indirect killing:¹ for this is permitted only because from the action there follows equally immediately a compensating good effect, namely the defense or preservation of the one attacked;

¹ Thus Saint Thomas explains it, II-II, q. 64, a. 7.

2. God has conceded no right over the life of an innocent person, which therefore in no case can be directly taken away, because this is always gravely unjust;

3. indirect killing can be licit if it follows from a legitimate action which equally immediately produces a greater, or at least equal, good effect; namely, this is not directly to kill, but to expose oneself to the danger of killing.

A fortiori, one's neighbor has a right to the salvation of the soul, and it is unjust to impede it.

IV. From the doctrine concerning charity we know that we are bound to love our neighbor more with respect to his soul and salvation than our own body and bodily life; likewise more with respect to the life of the body than our own temporal goods, but not more than our own life. Although licitly we can expose that life, this is not because we love another's life more, but because of the good of virtue, which is a spiritual good of the soul and thus surpasses bodily life. Hence:

1. In the extreme danger of our neighbor's salvation, we are bound under grave obligation to aid him even with certain danger of life, provided there is probable hope of helping him and no graver evil is feared.

2. In grave danger of our neighbor's salvation, we must aid him under grave obligation with some rather great detriment in temporal goods, but not with danger of life, unless someone is bound from justice by reason of office.

3. In extreme danger of our neighbor's life, we are bound under grave obligation to aid him with notable temporal detriment of our own, but not by extraordinary means nor with danger to our own life.

4. Although we are not bound, nevertheless we can licitly, charity persuading it, expose our life in grave danger of another's salvation, because this is worth more than our life; likewise in grave danger of another's life, because of the good of virtue, gratitude, friendship, the honor of God, or the public good; not because we esteem another's life more than our own, but because the good of virtue, which is spiritual, can be preferred to the good of one's own life, which is bodily.

Fortified with these principles, we now approach the solution of the questions.

I. Sterilization pertains to eugenic science.

Genetic science is the experimental science of hereditary transmission and variation among living things, namely, plants and animals, and of the laws which govern it; these laws have hitherto been uncertain.

Eugenics is the same science applied to human beings; this latter science is therefore less developed than the former.

The foundation of this science is investigation of the cell.

Eugenism etymologically means good birth. Eugenics intends a good race, a strong and robust people. It proposes to itself the end of rendering the human stock and species better and more robust, since at present there are several causes infecting it, especially certain diseases which continually increase to the great detriment of the family and civil society, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, mental diseases including dementia, alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, and so forth, and many others. Several of these are transmitted by heredity, arise from a disturbed organic alteration, and are exceedingly frequent. Tuberculosis and syphilis bring the greater injuries upon society.

It is certainly licit to employ means for diminishing and extirpating them, provided that the means themselves are licit, not evil.

But several means which have been employed are illicit and evil. Some are indirect, which positive eugenics uses, such as the legal prohibition of every marriage with any such person, and the obligation of producing a medical certificate establishing health as an indispensable condition of marriage. Others are direct, which negative eugenics uses, such as sterilization, neo-Malthusianism, the procuring of abortion, and so forth.¹

¹ Hence Payen, Déontologie médicale, ch. XII, art. 4, §2, establishes the following concerning false eugenism: False eugenism prevents marriage by the obligatory prenuptial certificate, upon which legal authorization is made dependent; it prevents conception by neo-Malthusianism and sterilization; it prevents birth by abortion; it prevents life by infanticide, before which certain persons do not draw back after birth; it prevents survival in society by the rejection of laws protecting the weak, which, however, it regards as inhuman and cruel.

In what follows we shall speak of sterilization.

II. Sterilization (onvruchtbaarmaking) signifies an action or operation which renders something sterile, so that it produces no fruit, for example, the action of preventing fermentation. Thus they speak of sterilization of a liquid, such as milk.

In biology, it is an action by which a living being is rendered infertile or incapable of reproduction. In physiology, it is an action which deprives a human being, male or female, of the possibility of procreation, or renders that person incapable of generation.

Sterility is distinguished as twofold: one is mere sterility or solely the incapacity to generate; the other arises from incapacity to perform carnal intercourse apt for generation. The former is called by theologians and canonists simply sterility or impossibility of generating; the latter is not customarily called sterility, but impotence, because it includes impotence to have intercourse, which, if perpetual, is a diriment impediment to marriage.

Theologians understand this of intercourse considered physiologically, or of an action of itself apt for generation, whereby the seed of the man is deposited in the due vessel or in the vagina of the woman. But physicians often consider the matter merely physically, namely, the mere physical possibility of copulation, whether seed is deposited or not. Hence a man who can perform intercourse, although he does not emit seed and cannot emit it, is not impotent for physicians. For theologians, however, he is truly impotent, indeed by natural law, so that if this condition is perpetual, he cannot enter marriage.²

² Physicians do not thereby deny the doctrine of theologians, but use a different terminology.

III. There are various manners of effecting sterilization.

1. Biological means can produce temporary sterilization in the woman. Thus:

a. by injection of a certain element of semen, for example, hormones especially of a ram, which acts after the manner of a vaccination rendering her immune for a period of six to eight and one-half months; but perhaps the time could be increased by repeated injections;

b. likewise by injection of an extract from the ovaries, placenta, or fetus.

Similarly, by injection of an anaphrodisiac substance, sterility or impotence can perhaps be obtained in the man, but only for a time.

2. Physical means likewise. By the so-called X-rays or Roentgen rays, or by rays produced from radium and directed upon the testicles of the man or ovaries of the woman, temporary or perpetual sterility can arise according to the dose. Thus genital activity is destroyed or atrophy of the testicles and ovaries is procured. But the means is not always infallibly certain. With a weak dose, there is rather a stimulation to ovulation.

Other physical means are painful and uncertain.

3. Surgical means especially:³

³ Cf. Muret, De la stérilisation sexuelle.

A. In the man there are:

a. castration, or removal or extirpation of the two testicles; but its effect is injurious to the organism, namely, it injures health and the virile character because of the absence of the internal secretion of hormones;

b. vasectomy, or the ligation or resection of the two vasa deferentia, that is, the canals which carry sperm or seed from the testicles into the penis, so that the seed cannot be ejaculated. The operation is very simple, not painful, dangerous, or injurious; it lasts five to ten minutes, so that the man can return to ordinary work almost immediately or already on the following day. Nor does it modify the virile character or sexual appetite, for the man retains perfect seed, but cannot ejaculate it.

It is disputed whether a remedy can be applied to the cutting or resection and communication through the vasa deferentia restored, at least in certain circumstances. Nevertheless, no example is known in which the possibility of generation has been restored to a man.

B. In the woman:

a. ovariotomy or hysterectomy, that is, removal of the two ovaries or the uterus, which is performed by the natural way through the vagina (colpotomy), or through the abdomen (laparotomy), in which latter case it brings some danger. Its effects are injurious and it changes the character of the woman; but it injures less than castration does in the man;

b. fallectomy or salpingectomy, that is, ligation or resection of the oviducts, or the two tubes which provide communication between the ovaries and the uterus; by this the ovum is prevented from descending into the uterus and the male seed from reaching and fertilizing it. It includes some danger and can be performed in eight different ways. Nevertheless, it is not always an infallibly certain means; the more efficacious manner is cutting between two ligatures;

c. inclusion of the uterus or its isolation; but this does not provide an always certain means.

I Say. It is never licit for anyone directly to kill himself; but sometimes it is licit to concur indirectly in the killing of oneself. The reason of the first is both because, from the natural law, man does not have direct dominion over his body, but only useful dominion and administration, since he received it from God and will be held to render it back to Him when He asks it back; and because man is essentially a servant in relation to God, but the condition of a servant necessarily requires that it not be in his own power to determine the time of serving. But the reason of the second is that to concur indirectly in the killing of oneself is the same as to place an action from which, beyond the intention, one's own death follows. But this must sometimes be licit, namely when the required conditions are verified, concerning which it was said in the tract on human acts, n. 8. Therefore. ... Cf. St. Thomas, 2-2, q. 64, art. 5. - Lugo, de just. et jur., disp. 10, nn. 9 and 17.

You Will Resolve. - 1st. It is not licit to mutilate oneself unless it is necessary for the preservation of the whole body, because man is not the lord of his members, but only their guardian, and whatever man is, it is wholly God's. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 373.

2nd. Likewise it is not licit to mutilate oneself for a spiritual good, or for avoiding any sin whatsoever. For as St. Thomas says: "Spiritual health can always be provided for otherwise than by the cutting off of a member, because sin is subject to the will. And therefore in no case is it licit to cut off a member on account of avoiding any sin whatsoever." Add that mutilation of this kind renders someone impotent for generating, yet does not exempt him from carnal temptations. But St. Alphonsus does not reject as improbable the opinion of those who say that mutilation of this kind is licit for the preservation of the voice, provided the moral danger of life is absent and it is not done to unwilling boys. - Cf. St. Thomas, 2-2, q. 65, art. 1. - St. Alphonsus, n. 374. - Baller., notes (a) and (b), p. 373.

3rd. It is never licit to macerate the body for shortening life, nor, even with such an end excluded, gravely to ruin health by immoderate and altogether indiscreet penances. Nevertheless, from virtue, it is licit to use penances ordinarily grave with a certain shortening of life; because, from the common opinion of the Doctors, for the sake of merit or the mortification of depraved nature some loss of longer life can be despised. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 371; and Hom. Ap., n. 2.

Question 1. Is someone held to use extraordinary remedies for preserving life?

Response. Negatively, and the reason is that an affirmative precept is not necessarily to be fulfilled in every possible way, but only in that way which is obvious and common; whence there is no obligation of preserving life except by ordinary means, namely those which neither bring great inconveniences, nor demand expenses immense according to the varied condition of each one, nor cause very bitter pains, etc. Thus, for example, you are not held, for the sake of preserving life, to suffer amputation of a leg or arm, or incision of the belly for extracting a stone. Nor is a virgin held to suffer an operation by the hands of a physician, even if life is endangered, when on account of shame this happens to her as something most grave, and instills in her a greater horror than death itself. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 372; and Hom. Ap., n. 2.

Question 2. Can a girl expose herself to danger of death for preserving virginity?

Response. Affirmatively, at least if death is not certainly going to follow, and this both on account of love of virginity and on account of the danger of sin which is often present in such an occasion. Indeed still more probably it must be affirmed, although death is certainly going to follow, and there is no proximate danger of consent, because even integrity of the body alone is valued very highly, and is a sufficient reason that some girl can permit herself to be killed. - I said can and not ought, because a girl of this kind is not held to undergo death for such a good, and therefore she could also permit her own violation, provided she resists positively by the will, and proximate danger of consent is absent. The reason is that this permission is not formal cooperation in the sin of another, but only material, and a just cause of permission is present, namely danger of death. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 368. - Baller., note (b), p. 371.

Question 3. Is it licit to set fire to a ship or tower, so that enemies may suffer grave damage, but with certain loss of one's own life?

Response. Affirmatively, at least more probably, because it is expedient that public harm be avoided or the common good procured even with the most certain harm of private persons. - Lugo, Lessius. - St. Alphonsus, n. 367.

Question 4. Can a guilty person, ordered by a judge, licitly inflict death upon himself?

Response. It is controverted. The common opinion denies. 1st. Because man would dispose of his life without the consent of the Lord, who gave the faculty of killing a man only in the cause of defense and in the cause of punishment; but the guilty person does not defend himself, nor can he exercise punitive justice toward himself; therefore he cannot kill himself. 2nd. Nature abhors this, since it is inhuman and cruel. - Cf. Lugo, disp. 10, n. 13. - Lessius, lib. 2, 19, nn. 25 and 26.

The other opinion probably affirms: both because the judge can entrust execution to whomever he wishes, and because no convincing contrary reason is brought forward: in the case he does not kill an innocent person, nor himself by his own authority. What prevents someone from bearing a twofold person, of the one punishing and the one punished? Certainly it is opposed to natural inclination, but this has force rather against the judge than against the guilty person. Even if the thing is cruel, it can often happen that by this death becomes easier; and surely it is difficult to prove conclusively that the guilty person in the case cannot inflict death upon himself. - Cf. Victoria, Relect. de homicidio. - St. Alphonsus III, n. 367. - Lehmkuhl, 733. - Ball.-Palm., vol. 2, p. 608.

Question 5. Is it licit for a woman to undergo ovariotomy, or for a man to undergo vasectomy?

Response. 1st. Affirmatively, in either case, if those operations are necessary for the health of the whole subject; for the member is for the subject. Thus commonly.

2nd. Negatively, in either case, if it is done precisely so that offspring may not be born. For thus the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office responded on May 22, 1895: "Whether the practice, whether active or passive, of a procedure is licit which intentionally proposes as its express end the sterilization of the woman. Response. Negatively"; therefore although the response concerns the woman, it certainly has force also for the man.

To induce sterility, or thus to deprive oneself of the power of generating and to impede the conception of offspring, or to effect that the semen is not prolific, is opposed to the principal intrinsic end of marriage, and to its good, namely offspring, to the natural end of the conjugal contract itself, to the intrinsic end of semen, and therefore is repugnant to the natural law, so that it cannot be made honorable by any good end. And hence Bossius: "Thirdly it is gathered that a husband or wife taking, or administering to them, a poison or potion of sterility, so that the man cannot generate or the woman conceive offspring, is a mortal sin against nature and the institution and law of marriage, so that it cannot be made honorable by any good end. ... The same is clear from the Bull of Sixtus V, Effrenatam; in which Bull Sixtus extended all penalties laid against those procuring abortion against all those who shall have given to women potions and poisons of sterility, and shall have furnished an impediment so that they not conceive offspring." Whence from the fact that a woman can no longer give birth, it is not thereby licit for her to take care that the tubes be cut or tied, and by equal reason it is not licit for a man unwilling to have offspring more numerous, or weak offspring, or any offspring at all, to undergo double vasectomy. - Nouvelle Revue Theol., v. 9, p. 432; v. 29, 367. - Diana, t. 5, tr. 6, 36, 2, 37. - Sylvius on 2-2, q. 64, a. 7, quest. 4, c. 3. - Sanchez, De Matrimonio, lib. IX, disp. 20, n. 2. - Azor, Ins. Mor., p. 3, lib. 11, chap. 4, q. 2. - St. Thomas, 2-2, q. 65, a. 1, ad 3. - Tabiena, Summa, v. uxor. - Turrianus, t. 2, disp. 26, nn. 46 and 47. - Eschbach, Disput. Phys. Theol., p. 371. The question is very ancient and the negative opinion was altogether most common.

§ D. Thom. quaest. 64. art 5.

The killer of himself is proclaimed unjust by D. Bonaventura in 3. dist. 37. dub. 5. litt. and D. Thom. here; all follow them, as Farinac. reports, Tom. 4. quaest. 128., Fagundez in quintum praeceptum decal. cap. 11.

It is PROVED by the Saintly Doctors from the fifth precept, Non occides, by which precept every unjust killing of a man is prohibited; but none is more unjust than against oneself; because, as D. Bonavent. says, in 3. dist. 29. quaest. 3., Fundamento I., Qui sibi nequam est, cui alii bonus erit? Ecclesiastici 14.

But the UNHAPPY man who kills himself, that he may obtain rest, is destined to eternal punishments without rest, as the Seraphic Doctor says, in 3. dist. 28. dub. 2.; indeed he is deprived of the rest of burial, as was defined in the Council of Braga, cap. 34., and it is related in cap. Placuit, dist. 23. quaest. 5.: Placuit, ut qui sibi ipsis, aut per ferrum, aut per venenum, aut per praecipitium, aut suspendium, aut quolibet modo, violentam inferunt mortem, nulla pro eis in oblatione commemoratio fiat; neque cum Psalmis ad sepulturam cadavera eorum deducantur.

I ADD, however; for this punishment to be incurred it is required that he involve himself in full judgment; For if he does it in a frenzy, indeed pious Mother Church has compassion on him. But if there is doubt, he is not to be deprived of Ecclesiastical Sepulture, but is to be conducted with lesser ceremony; for instance with one or two Priests accompanying. So very many, whom Farinac. follows, loco cit. num. 16.

By civil law, the one who kills himself, or attempts to kill himself, even if death does not follow, is infamous, Lex si aliquid, § finali, ff. de poenis, and Lex, omne delictum, §. si se vulnerauerit, ff. de re militari, where it speaks of honorary soldiers.

The Doctors commonly assert, with D. Bonaventure, that the one who kills himself sins mortally against Justice toward God, and toward the Republic, of which he is a member; and against Charity toward himself, as the Saintly Doctor teaches in the places to be cited and alleged, D. Thom. 2. 2. quaest. 64. art. 5. ad 1., Sotus L. 4. de Iust. quaest. 2. art. 3., Couar. lib. 4. var. cap. 2., Sayrus lib. 7. cap. 17., Petrus Navar. lib. 2. de restitut. cap. 3. num. 54., Fagundez in quintum Praeceptum decalogi, L. 5. cap. 11. num. 5.

It is not, however, properly against justice toward the Republic, because it is not perfectly mistress of his own life, as Fagundez notes, cont. Aragon. 2. 2. quaest. 62. Tract. de dominio vitae, concl. 1., but against God, the supreme Lord, as Plato argues in Phaedone.

There arises a new question, which Lessius first hinted at, Tom. 1. de Iust. Lib. 2. cap. 9. dub. 6. num. 32., and Fagundez discusses, num. 6.: whether the Commander of a fleet of Miopari, when otherwise he cannot escape the hands of the Barbarians, can licitly send fire into the sulphurous powder and set the ship ablaze, not in order to kill himself and others, but lest that ship come into the hands of the enemy, lest they become more insolent and stronger because of it.

The FIRST opinion is affirmative, which Lessius follows, and Fagundez applauds: others subscribe, who allege that the defenders of the fatherland, unable otherwise to sustain death, can undertake some deed, even if they are to be killed because of it. So Victoria relect. de homicid. ad ult., Aragon. 2. 2. quaest. 62. tract. 1. de dominio vitae, concl. 1. quaest. 64. art. 1., Valentia Tom. 3. disput. 5. quaest. 8. puncto 2., Lopez p. p. Instruct. cap. 65.; and they cite the examples of Samson, Iudv 16., of Eleazar primo, Machab. 9., of Raziz 2. Machab. 14., and of other Heroes.

The SECOND opinion is negative. So D. Thom. in the place cited, whom they commonly follow, who in the deed of Samson take refuge in a singular impulse of God. So D. Bonavent. in 4. dist. 32. art. 2. quaest. 1.

It is PROVED by the Saintly Doctor in the chapter on the sixth precept of the Decalogue from the divine precept: Non occides. But what they say, that this does not intend one to kill oneself, is frivolous; For he efficiently brings about his own death, by sending in a cause naturally efficacious.

To the example of Samson D. Bonaventure answers that he did it, moved by God, who is the lord of life; for Scripture says: Irruit super eum spiritus Domini, as Tostatus observes, in 16. Iudic. quaest. 54., citing D. Augustine primo, de civit. Dei, cap. 20., and he says the same in lib. contra secundam epistolam Gaudensii.

But that he could have done it without the impulse of God, as Sayrus Lib. 7. cap. 9. num. 9., Lessius loco cit., Caietanus Iud. 16., Lopez cap. 65. Instruct. say, is not proved; otherwise God would have sent in His Spirit in vain.

I say the SAME of Eleazar, whom D. Ambrose praises, Lib. primo, offic. cap. 40.

I assert entirely the SAME of Razia, who stabbed himself and threw himself headlong from a height, lest he fall into the power of the Barbarians. For so Scripture says: Eligens nobiliter potius mori, quam subditus fieri peccatoribus. But the Greek text is rendered thus: Generose volens mori potius, quam peccatoribus subditum fieri, et propria nobilitate indigne contumeliam pati.

Wherefore the Holy Spirit praises him for this. Nor do some rightly say that he is so related; but that, deceived by the opinion of his own nobility, he mortally sinned; among whom is also D. Thom. in the place cited, ad 5., and others in Fagundez num. 8., for Scripture acknowledges this act as generous. Therefore Lyra defends him on the text, and Victoria at the end.

The FIRST opinion is, that it is mortal to use penances imprudently applied, which one has recognized will gravely harm, even if life be shortened on account of satisfying God. So D. Thom. 2. 2. quaest. 147. art. 5., Tolet. lib. 5. summae, cap. 6. concl. 4., Navar. summa Lat. cap. 15. num. 12., Petrus Navarrus lib. 2. restit. cap. 3. num. 88., Couar. lib. 1. variar. cap. 10., Aragon. 2. 2. quaest. 64. art. 5. ad 5., Lopez p. p. instruct. cap. 64., Sayrus lib. 7. cap. 9., Bassaeus V. Homic. 1. num. 8., Diana part. 5. tract. 4. Resol. 33., Pasqual. de ieiunio, disp. 27.

Fagundez SUBSCRIBES, num. 18., that it is deadly to feed on raw herbs, or on other gravely harmful foods, and he cites Victoria num. 43., Aragonius, and Lopez above; yet these excuse one who does not advert to it.

Indeed I am lifted up in wonder, and moved by unblemished examples, when I read through the life of the saints, who pleased God most of all, and among them the Seraphic Father Francis; of whom S. Bonaventura relates in the legend, especially cap. 5., that the most holy Patriarch so crucified, through the whole course of his penitential life, his flesh with its concupiscences, that he scarcely ever in sound health admitted cooked foods, and when he did admit them, he finished them with ashes, or spoilt them with water. And of water he never dared to drink as much as nature would suffice: the bare earth was his bed, wearing a hairshirt, his clothing torn, trembling in the utmost rigor of winter, and he continually devised other new kinds of penance. Now on a certain night, when he was passing the night at the hermitage of Sarthianus, he heard a voice calling him three times: FRANCIS, FRANCIS, FRANCIS. To which he: What? The voice answered: There is no sinner whom God does not spare; but whoever kills himself with harsh penance will not find mercy in eternity: Immediately the man of God perceived the voice of the enemy, and recognized the cunning of the veteran serpent, for he was so inflamed by the temptation of the flesh: But the Holy Father, suddenly stripping himself and scourging himself sharply, thus addresses his body: Come, brother ass. Thus it befits you to undergo the scourges. Soon indeed he rolled among the snows; then he composed seven great heaps of snow, and said: See, this household must be fed by you: this is the wife; these the sons; these the daughters to be clothed; but if this care oppresses you, return; and serve God.

For thus he called his body brother ass, as if to be subjected to laborious burdens, to be beaten with frequent scourges, and to be refreshed with vile fodder. This is D. Bonaventure.

The same Saintly Doctor in the Diaeta, tit. 2. cap. 6., commends gravely the fasting of Elias and of other saints, and says it was instituted by the true Hippocrates, God.

And in Lib. 4. of the Pharetra, cap. 45., he relates of D. Bernard, sermone 66. in Cantica: Abstinebo a vino, quia in vino luxuria est, aut si infirmus sum, medico utar, iuxta consilium Apostoli. Abstinebo a carnibus, ne dum mihi nimis carnem nutriunt, simul et carnis nutriant vitia, etc.

But in the sermon on S. John the Baptist, he observes the austerity of S. John, Matth. 3. erat in deserto ab aetate tenella, vestimentum e pilis camelorum, cibus locustae, ac mel Sylvestre, et Lucae primo insinuatur: Vinum, et siceram non bibet.

Praebuit hirtum tegumen camelus Artubus sacris, strophium bidentes Cui latex haustum sociata pastum Mella Locustis.

Likewise in cap. 7. it is said: Venit Ioannes, non manducans panem; neque bibens vinum, Et tamen aequaliter nunquam peccavit. Sane maior esse debet poenitentia peccatorum, and D. Gregorio homil. 20. in Euangelia, and he subjoins: si Ioannes, et Elias, et omnes SS. P. P. in desertis AEgypti, tantis se vigiliis, et ieiuniis macerarunt, tam aspera, et inculta vestimenta portaverunt, quidnos pleni peccatis omnibus facere debemus? These words of the Saintly Doctor: certainly those Anchorites and Monks fed on herbs and water, and were nourished by them.

The Saintly Doctor confesses in the Apologia pauperum that now indeed more is required on account of weaker natures, but one must beware of self-love, which is accustomed to indulge itself too much.

Without doubt, D. Augustine teaches that this is not licit, primo de civitate, cap. 25. et 27., and D. Bonavent. ad 12. Ioan., where with the same D. Augustine, tract. 51. in Ioannem, he condemns the Donatists, who killed themselves in detestation of sin, and on this account gloried that they would soon be redeemed with the crown of Martyrdom.

Nor is this licit in order to avoid rape. For so the most valiant Lucia said: Si me feceris violari, castitas duplicabitur ad coronam. Therefore S. Bonavent. describes her as most valiant in sermonibus. On the contrary, D. Augustine, 1. de civitate, cap. 19., reproves the Roman Lucretia as pusillanimous, because she killed herself lest she succumb to the adultery of the violating Tarquin. Yet Bassaeus says that she, and others, can be excused on account of invincible ignorance; and the deed of S. Apollonia is excused by many, and he brings forward many in Diana part. 6. tract. 7. Resol. 47. But that one is justified by the Church.

But he praises rather allowing oneself to be killed by one willing to violate, in order to decline the danger of consent; for we are held to allow life rather to be snatched away than to sin against God, as the Saintly Doctor argues in the place cited: Qui amat animam suam, perdet eam, et qui perdiderit animam suam propter me, inveniet eam, And it is the common opinion

The FIRST opinion is negative. So Durandus 4. dist. 17. quaest. 6., Paludanus dist. 15. q. 3. art. 2. contr. 3., Petrus Navat. de restit. lib. 2. cap. 3. disp. 3. num. 41., and it seems to be D. Augustine's in the Lib. de mendacio, cap. 6. It is alleged by Fagundez Lib. 5. cap. 12. num. 6., and by D. Bonavent. 3. dist. 19. quaest. 3., because he said that those are fools who neglect their own temporal life on account of the corporal life of another. But the Saintly Doctor speaks in another way, and in another sense; for he says: Those are considered fools who neglect their own salvation, so that they may procure another's; but he speaks according to the phrase of Christ: Quid prodest homini, si universum mundum lucretur, animae vero suae detrimentum patiatur? The Seraphic Doctor elegantly discusses this on this passage of Lucae 9.

Moreover, in dub. 1. litt. he says this is licit for a just cause, and in dub. 5. he says it belongs to perfect Charity. Wherefore he holds the affirmative opinion with D. Thom. 3. dist. 29. quaest. 15. art. 5. ad 3., and Lib. 1. de regimine Principum, cap. 10., and 2. 2. quaest. 26. art. 4 ad 3., and art. 5. ad 3. So Victoria relect. de homicidio, ad 5. num. 27., Sotus Lib. 5. de Iust. quaest. 1. art. 6., Bannes 2. 2. quaest. 26. art 4. dub. 3., Salon. 2. 2. quaest. 64. art. 5. ad 5., Aragon. ibi ad 4., Valentia Tom. 3. disp. 3. quaest. 4. puncto 3., Corduba lib. 1. quaest. 38. ad 4., Tolet. lib. 5. sum. cap. 6., Sà V. homic., Sayrus lib. 7. cap 9. num. 23., Fagundez Lib. 5. cap. 12. num. 7.

The REASON of D. Bonaventure, which the others use, is, that in this case he does not love his neighbor more than himself; but on account of the honor of the virtue of friendship, and for God, on account of some preeminent cause of honesty (S. Bonaventure adds), he prefers the life of his friend.

I have treated of this also in the Tract. de Charitate, disp. 8. quaest. 34., in which disputation I have also treated, in quaestione 30., when we are held to undergo death on account of the spiritual good of others.

IT IS CERTAIN that in many cases we are bound to undergo death for the salvation of souls, according to John 3: And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

IT IS PROVED by St. Bonaventure on John 15, from those words of Christ: This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man hath, than that a man lay down his life for his friends. St. Augustine confirms this in tractate 84 on John. And he observes with St. Gregory, homily 27 on the Gospels, that under the name of friends, in the precept of charity, even enemies are included.

That this is a precept, Christ himself asserts, when he adds: You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you. Secondly, for the defense of the honor of FAITH, we are bound to face death.

IT IS PROVED by St. Bonaventure on Luke 9: For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of man shall be ashamed, when he shall come in his majesty. He also cites 1 Kings 2: Whosoever shall glorify me, him will I glorify: but they that despise me, shall be ignoble, that is, on the day of judgment. For God spoke thus, threatening eternal destruction to Heli, who had not reproved the horrible sins of his sons. Ecclesiasticus 4 adds the same: For the sake of thy soul be not ashamed to speak the truth. Hence also in Romans 1 the Apostle says: I am not ashamed of the Gospel.

From these passages the Saintly Doctor shows that a learned man is bound to speak if ignominy threatens Christ, as for instance if heretics were from this to boast that their sects are the true ones, and that the Christian Catholic Religion is false. So too Sayrus, Book 7, cap. 9, num. 17; Toletus, Book 5 of the Summa, cap. 16; Soto, Book 5 on Justice, question 1, article 7; Fagundez, Book 5, cap. 12, num. 10.

THE PRECEPT of confessing the faith, certainly, at that time most of all compels, as is said in Romans 10: For, with the heart, we believe unto justice: but, with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation, as he implies in the Dieta, title two, chapter three, and as I said in disputation 1, question 16.

Anna, a Catholic and married, because of deformity of the body is unable to bring forth offspring by the natural way. Hence the first was extracted by craniotomy, the second was brought forth alive by a Caesarean operation, and the third will come forth into the light after a short space of time; the surgeon wishes to extract it and at the same time to prevent future dangers by the operation which is called after Porro or Tait-Porro, by which the infant together with the uterus and appendages is removed by abdominal section. Anna therefore consults her confessor whether it is lawful or necessary to undergo the said operation. Hence it is asked:

1. Is a mother bound to lose temporal life in order to procure eternal salvation for her offspring?

2. Is the mutilation of a human being lawful?

3. Does Anna lawfully engage in married life?

4. What is to be said of the case?

1. Is a mother bound to give her life for the eternal salvation of her child?

Yes; per se it is a general rule of charity that we must be prepared to sacrifice our temporal life for the eternal salvation of our neighbor, as St. John teaches: “We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”¹ This obligation, however, does not arise frequently, because in ordinary circumstances the necessity for doing so is not certain, nor is the expected result certain.

1 1 John iii. 16.

2. Is it lawful to mutilate a man?

No; except in so far as it is necessary to preserve the man’s life, or unless it is commanded by competent authority in punishment of crime, according to the law of the country. Otherwise as man is not the owner of his life or limbs, but the ownership of them belongs to God, man can not dispose of life or limb, because he can not dispose of what does not belong to him.

3. Does Ann lawfully lead a married life?

As she cannot bring forth children in the ordinary way it would have been better if she had never married, and even now that she is married it would be better if, by mutual consent, husband and wife abstained from marital intercourse. However, there is no strict obligation to abstain, as if children are conceived, they can absolutely be delivered either by Cesarian section, or perhaps after the seventh month by bringing on premature labor, without killing either mother or child.

4. The case. The operation of craniotomy on the first child was unlawful if the child were alive, for it is the direct killing of the innocent. Cesarian section, of course, is lawful in such cases of necessity. The operation called Tait-Porro is also lawful if it is necessary in order to save the mother's life, “provided that serious and timely provision be made, as far as possible, for both the life of the fetus and that of the mother.” If it is not necessary, and if ordinary Cesarian section would suffice, then it is unwarrantable mutilation of a human being.

1. By suicide we shall here understand the direct compassing of one's own death, which is an act never lawful. There is no difficulty in seeing the unlawfulness of suicide for ordinary cases. The world could not go on, if men were to kill themselves upon every slight disappointment. But neither are they likely so to do. It is the hard cases, where men are apt to lay violent hands on themselves, that put the moralist on his mettle to restrain them by reasons. Why should not the solitary invalid destroy himself, he whose life has become a hopeless torture, and whose death none would mourn? Why should not a voluntary death be sought as an escape from temptation and from imminent sin? Why should not the first victims of a dire contagion acquiesce in being slaughtered like cattle? Or if it be deemed perilous to commit the departure from life to each one's private whim and fancy, why not have the thing licensed under certificate of three clergymen and four doctors, who could testify that it is done on good grounds?

2. To all these questions there is one good answer returned by Paley on the principle of General Consequences. (Ethics, c. x., n. 3, p. 178.)

"The true question of this argument is no other than this: May every man who chooses to destroy his life, innocently do so? Limit and distinguish the subject as you can, it will come at last to this question. For, shall we say that we are then at liberty to commit suicide, when we find our continuance in life becomes useless to mankind? Any one who pleases, may make himself useless; and melancholy minds are prone to think themselves useless when they really are not so…. In like manner, whatever other rule you assign, it will ultimately bring us to an indiscriminate toleration of suicide, in all cases in which there is danger of its being committed. It remains, therefore, to enquire what would be the effect of such a toleration: evidently, the loss of many lives to the community, of which some might be useful or important; the affliction of many families, and the consternation of all: for mankind must live in continual alarm for the fate of their friends, when every disgust which is powerful enough to tempt men to suicide, shall be deemed sufficient to justify it." (Moral Philosophy, bk. iv., c. iii.)

A word in confirmation of Paley on the plan of the medico-clerical certificate. There would be doctors, and I fear clergymen too, who would get a name for giving these certificates easily: under their hand many a patient might be smothered by his attendants with or without his own consent. Many another wretch would consider, that if the learned and reverend gentlemen empowered to license his departure from life only felt what he had to endure, there would be no difficulty about the certificate: so he would depart on presumed leave. The whole effect would be to make men less tender of their own lives, and by consequence of those of others, to the vast unsettling of society.

3. An argument from general consequences, however, does not go down into the depths of things. There is always something morally crooked and inordinate in an action itself, the general consequences whereof are bad. It remains to point out the moral crookedness, inordination, and unreasonableness, that is intrinsic to the act of suicide, apart from its consequences. We find the inordination in this, that suicide is an act falling upon undue matter, being an act destructive of that which the agent has power over only to preserve. It is natural to every being, animate and inanimate, to the full extent of its entity and power, to maintain itself, and to resist destruction as long as it can. This is the struggle for existence, one of the primary laws of nature. Man has intelligence and power over himself, that he may conduct his own struggle well and wisely. He may struggle more or less, as he sees expedient, looking to higher goods even than self-preservation in this mortal life: but he may not take that power of managing himself, which nature invests him with for his preservation, and use it to his own destruction. Should he do so, he perverts the natural order of his own being, and thereby sins. (Ethics, c. vi., s. i., nn. 1-5, p. 109.)

4. It may be objected, that man is only bound to self-preservation so long as life is a blessing; that, when the scale of death far outweighs that of life in desirableness, it is cruelty to himself to preserve his life any longer, and a kindness to himself to destroy it; that in such a plight, accordingly, it is not unnatural for a man to put himself, not so much out of life as out of misery. To this argument it is sometimes answered that, whereas death is the greatest of evils, it is foolish and wicked to resort to dying as a refuge against any other calamity. But this answer proves too much. It would show that it is never lawful even to wish for death: whereas under many conditions, such as those now under consideration, death is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and may be most piously desired, as a gain and by comparison a good: as Ecclesiasticus says (xxx. 17): "Better is death than a bitter life, and everlasting rest than continual sickness." The truth seems to be, that there are many things highly good and desirable in themselves, which become evil when compassed in a particular way. The death of a great tyrant or persecutor may be a blessing to the universe, but his death by the hand of an assassin is an intolerable evil. So is death, as the schoolmen say, in facto esse, and everlasting rest, better than a bitter life, but not death in fieri, when that means dying by your own hand. There the unnaturalness comes in and the irrationality. A mother, watching the death agony of her son, may piously wish it over: but it were an unmotherly act to lay her own hand on his mouth and smother him. To lay violent hands on oneself is abidingly cruel and unnatural, more so than if the suicide's own mother slew him.

5. But though a man may not use actual violence against his own person, may he not perhaps cease to preserve himself, abstain from food, as the Roman noble did, in the tortures of the gout, and by abstaining end them? I answer, a man's taking food periodically is as much part of his life as the coursing of the blood in his veins. It is doing himself no less violence to refuse food ready to hand, when he is starving, on purpose that he may starve, than to open a vein on purpose to bleed to death. This, when the food is readily accessible: the case is otherwise when it is not procurable except by extraordinary means.

6. Another consideration. To destroy a thing is the exclusive right of the owner and master of the same. If therefore man is his own master, in the sense that no one else can claim dominion over him, may he not accordingly destroy himself? The metaphysician will point out that master denotes a relation, that every relation has two terms, that consequently a man cannot be his own master any more than he can be his own father; and that, not owning himself, he may not destroy himself. But, leaving this metaphysical argument for what it is worth, we observe that man has a Master, Owner, Proprietor, and Sovereign Lord, God Almighty. To take your own life is to usurp the dominion of God. It is wronging the Lord of life and death. But none is wronged against his will: God is willing that murderers should be hung, may He not also be willing that men in misery should hang themselves? To this query suffice it for the present to reply, that God governs us for our good; and that capital punishment makes for the good of the community, but never suicide. (c. viii., s. viii., n. 7, p. 349.)

7. It was the doctrine of Aristotle and the Greeks, that the citizen belongs to the State, and that therefore suicide was robbing the State and doing it a formal injury. But no modern State takes this view of its subjects. No modern mind would place suicide in the same category of crime with robbing the Exchequer.

8. The great deterrent against suicide, in cases where misery meets with recklessness, is the thought,

In that sleep of death what dreams may come!—

above all, the fear of being confronted with an angry God. Away from belief in God's judgments and a future state, our arguments against suicide may be good logic, but they make poor rhetoric for those who need them most. Men are wonderfully imitative in killing themselves. Once the practice is come in vogue, it becomes a rage, an epidemic. Atheism and Materialism form the best nidus for the contagion of suicide. It is a shrewd remark of Madame de Stael: "Though there are crimes of a darker hue than suicide, yet there is none other by which man seems so entirely to renounce the protection of God."

Readings.—Ar., Eth., III., vii., 13; ib., V., xi., nn. 1-3; St. Thos., 2a 2æ, q. 64, art. 5; St. Aug., De Civitate Dei, i., cc. 26, 27; Paley, Mor. Phil., bk. iv., c. iii.

Since cases involving the question of burying suicides are not infrequent, it will be well to give a brief statement of the principles which must govern the priest’s procedure under such circumstances.

Christian burial, which includes the obsequies prescribed by the Church, and depositing the corpse in consegrated ground, the cemetery, constitutes a distinction in the view of the Church not only, but also of the faithful, and it can only be accorded to those who, during life and at their death, showed themselves to be true members of the Church, and therefore worthy of this distinction. This manifestly is not true of those who, of sound mind and therefore with premeditation and intention, make away with themselves, and thus not only cause sorrow to the Church, but give great scandal to the faithful. By his crime the suicide forfeits the distinction of Christian burial and it would be unjust, and would provike scandal, if he, in regard to Christian burial, were given equality with those members of the Church who depart this life in the faith and reconciled to God.

Christian burial is a privilege of the faithful also by reason of their communion with the Church, which, according to her teaching, is not terminated by death, but continues after the same. The true Catholic is in his last hour at one with the Church; he receives from her hand the last fortifying, the last consolation upon the final, decisive road. It is therefore a natural and logical consequence that those who have shown themselves unworthy of this ecclesiastical communion, be it during life by a conduct that incurs censure (and which, through the fault of the deceased, has not been removed), or be it in death, by commission of a grievous crime which the Church punishes with deprivation of Christian burial, have lost the right to such burial. Suicide is such a crime which the Church punishes with the refusal of Christian burial, in order to indicate that those who commit it cannot continue in her communion, and, also, to inspire her children with a great horror of this crime.

The Roman ritual contains the following clear and distinct directions: The parish priest ought not to be ignorant of those who by the law itself are to be excluded from ecclesiastical burial, lest he ever admit anyone to it contrary to the decrees of the sacred canons. Ecclesiastical burial is therefore denied ... to those who kill themselves through despair or anger, but not if it happens through insanity, unless (such suicides) gave signs of repentance before death.

Manifestly there is here made distinction in regard to the unfortunates who commit suicide. There are those who, in the state of insanity, of hypochondria, or of melancholy, therefore while of unsound mind, take their lives; to such unfortunates Christian burial cannot be denied, because their act was neither premeditated nor undertaken in full possession of reason, and therefore not culpable; indeed, according to the decision of the Congregation of the Holy Office (ddto. May 16, 1866), they may even be buried with solemn ceremonies.

To the other class belong those who commit suicide with design and premeditation, in a conscious and sane state of mind, in culpable despair or anger. If it is certain that the deed was done in soundness of mind, and with the full use of reason, with full knowledge and intention, then Christian burial, as any other ecclesiastical function, even the ordinary blessing of the corpse, must be denied. In this case Christian burial would manifestly be a violation of the law; it would be a weakening of Church discipline and of the religious sentiment of the faithful, who would be scandalized by such burial, as experience has shown. Nevertheless the Church, ever solicitous for the salvation of her members, uses even in regard to these iniquitous unfortunates, utmost indulgence and consideration. If such persons do not die in the commission of the deed, and if before dying they give signs of repentance, if they ask for the priest, or, perhaps, even receive the Sacraments, then the Church does not refuse them Christian burial. (Rit Rom. I. c.)

When, on the contrary, it remains doubtful, after careful inquiry into the matter, whether the deed occurred with full consciousness and in sane mind, then the suicide’s irresponsibility is presumed, because it is not supposed that anyone in sound mind and unimpaired use of reason would commit so grievous and unnatural a crime as premeditated suicide, and deal with his greatest earthly good, his life, so malevolently. In such a case the deceased may be allowed Christian burial, according to the principle: Odiosa sunt restringenda, omitting, however, solemnity and display.

If for some reasons it appears doubtful whether a suicide should be refused or allowed Christian burial, the case with detailed information should be laid before the ordinary, and his decision observed.

The principles here briefly set forth governing the burial of suicides are specifically contained in the quoted decision of the Congregation of the Holy Office, of which we will insert here, on account of their great practical significance the chief points: “Parish priests are to be admonished that in individual cases, insofar as possible, they have recourse to the Ordinary. The rule is that it is not lawful to give ecclesiastical burial to those who kill themselves through despair or anger (but not if it happens through insanity), unless before death they gave signs of repentance.

Furthermore.

1. When it is certainly established that the act arose either from anger or from despair, ecclesiastical burial must be denied and the pomp and solemnities of the funeral rites must be avoided;

2. but when insanity is certainly established, ecclesiastical burial with the solemnities of the funeral rites is to be given;

3. Yet when a doubt remains whether someone gave himself death through despair or through insanity, ecclesiastical burial may be given, but with the pomp and solemnities of the funeral rites avoided.

If these principles about the burying of suicides are rigidly observed and explained to the faithful on suitable opportunities, mistakes in the pastoral practise will not be easily made, and criticism and unpleasantness will be avoided.

Dr. Anton Brychta.

Case.—A noted criminal in the West was convicted of murder in the first degree and has been sentenced to death. In sentencing him the Court gave the doomed man the alternative of dying by his own hand on a fixed day, the method to be selected by the criminal himself.

Question.—Is this not suicide? If so, is it not forbidden by the law of the country and the law of God?

Solution.—It is never lawful directly and intentionally to take one’s own life. To do so would be a grave violation of the law of charity which obliges one to love his body and soul in the proper way and to the proper degree. It would likewise be a serious infraction of the virtue of justice, for by self-destruction we are depriving God of what is His, and the State of what belongs to it, viz., the lives of its citizens. Beyond doubt the State acts properly in putting to death criminals who have been duly condemned according to the just laws of the land. But does this involve a right on the part of a judge to order a criminal so condemned to put himself to death? We know that this has been a long-standing practice among Eastern nations. Such a practice cannot be justified in conscience. Hence we find theologians very decided in declaring that a criminal ordered by the State to put an end to his own life is not bound to obey such a command. They consider that obedience in the given case would constitute grave disobedience to the divine law as expressed in the precept “thou shalt not kill.” Moreover, in such an action the dictates of the natural law would be set at naught, for nature abhors self-destruction as something inhuman and cruel, even when brought about at the command of lawful civil authority; such authority does not extend to the act of self-destruction.

As to the main question involved in the case, viz., whether a justly condemned criminal can with a safe conscience take advantage of the opportunity offered by the State and choose death at his own hands in a manner less painful, less dishonorable, and therefore less revolting to human nature, theologians are not agreed. The common opinion seems to be that a criminal is not at liberty to effect his own death, moved by reasons given above, for he is directly effecting something that is intrinsically evil and that at the same time is abhorrent to nature, a something, therefore, never to be countenanced. If, they say, a man is never justified in executing capital punishment upon his father or his children, by reason of the demands of the law of charity, so likewise is he forbidden by the same law and with greater stringency to execute himself at the behest or sufferance of the State. (Lessius, St. Thomas, Bus. Suar. Soto et alii apud St. Alphonsum de precepto V, No. 369.)

Other theologians assert that one justly condemned can with the permission of the State execute himself without breaking the law of God or doing violence to the love due himself. (Genicot, Vazquez, Bon, Elbel et alii.) “If,” it is argued, “a criminal can open his mouth and swallow the poison given him by his executioner, why cannot he take it from his own hands? What difference does it make whether he or someone else pours out the poison, as long as no further delay is vouchsafed? Just this difference, that there is less horror in taking the fatal draught from his own hands.” (Franc, Victoria.) Again, if the judge can justly commit the execution of the sentence to a stranger, he can certainly commit it to the criminal himself. In executing himself he is not taking the life of an innocent man, nor acting by his own authority (Vide Less. lib 2, 19, nn. 25, 26), nor without sanction of the law. Hence he is not disposing unjustly of what belongs to God and to the State, and is exercising the virtue of charity towards himself by choosing an easier death in preference to a more cruel one; at least one less revolting to his own sensibilities. It is evident, then, that the man whose life is forfeit to the State can follow either of the opinions given above with a safe conscience.