The 60-Second Aquinas
Lesson
Suicide as Murder
October 25, 1998
What makes someone commit suicide? Hundreds of families contemplate this every year, but it’s nearly impossible to come to completely understand what would lead one to take his own life.
That’s because causing one’s own death is diametrically opposed to our natural tendency for life: "everything naturally loves itself, the result being that everything naturally keeps itself in being, and resists corruptions so far as it can" (ST II-II, Q. 64, Art. 5). The act of suicide, Aquinas determines, is "contrary to the natural law and to charity" (ibid.).
The suicidal individual determines that death is preferable to whatever pain is being suffered. But, suicide is the assertion of man’s free will in an issue that should be left to God: "the passage from this life to another and happier one is subject not to man’s free will but to the power of God" (ibid.).
Furthermore, "the ultimate and most fearsome evil of this life is death … Therefore to bring death upon oneself in order to escape the other afflictions of this life, is to adopt a greater evil in order to avoid a lesser" (ibid.).
Suicide denies that "God is Lord of death and life" (ST II-II, Q. 64, Art. 6).
Explanation of The 60-Second Aquinas Lesson
