FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 624 20/3/15 THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

SUICIDE? THE ULTIMATE SIN? OR IS EVEN SUICIDE NEITHER GOOD NOR EVIL?
------------------------------------------------------------

A man once phoned me up requesting a funeral for a relative. ‘We wish it to be the service from Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer’, he said. ‘Very well’, I replied. As in afterthought, he added: ‘You know, he took his own life.’

That raised a problem. Because the Prayer Book stipulates that such service is not to be used for ‘those who have laid violent hands upon themselves.’ Even Reformer Archbishop Cranmer stood with the universal tradition of the Church on denying suicides burial in consecrated ground.

Not for long. The General Synod of the C of E has voted to knock out all reference to suicide in Canon Law. Going directly against Christian doctrine. Why? Because, as St Tomas Aquinas puts it, suicide is ‘the greatest crime’. The self-killer sins in three major ways. First, against his Creator. Second, against his society. Third, against that natural self-love without which even love of neighbour is impossible.

Let us consider. A sin against the society?  A very tight, close-knit and cohesive community, each member of which is bound to the whole? Current Western societies are unlike that. If some obscure and lonely fellow takes his own life, will society even notice or give a damn?

A sin against self-love? Well, certainly against the nearly universal instinct of self-preservation. Spinoza even declared it logically impossible for a person to self-destruct. Confronted with obvious examples to the contrary, the philosopher said the people in question were merely mad. Naturally, some suicides are of an unsound mind but not all. When Roman Cato took his own life he wasn’t insane. He did it quite rationally because he did not wish to see liberty destroyed and be forced to live under a dictator. Rational suicide shows that self-preservation is not universal.

A sin against God? Socrates argues that way: ‘Would you not be angry if one of your slaves ran away?’ As He is our Maker, we are like his property. We have no right to rob of his rights the Author of our being. So in a sense the suicide is like an unnatural rebel, an anarchist and a thief. However, God is not like a big slave-master in the sky and human beings are not like his chattels. Moreover, the Word of God, the Holy Bible, contains no direct divine command ‘Thou shall not commit suicide’. John Donne gave Samson as an example of a Biblical hero who takes his own life and of course is not condemned. St Augustine tried to sneak in the proposition that it was the Holy Spirit that prompted Samson to bring down the temple of the Philistines and so destroy him together with his enemies but the Bible says nothing about that.

Samson is a positive figure. Not so Judas Iscariot, the shameful betrayer of the Lord for thirty pieces of silver. According to the New Testament Judas was sorry and took his own life. Clearly, the implication is that an infamous end fitted an infamous life.

What if someone does not believe in God? Writer Arthur Koestler was a Jew but indifferent to his ancestral religion. At the age of 78 he committed suicide. (His much younger and healthy wife chose to die with him.) ‘I am not afraid of death but of dying’, he affirmed. He suffered from Parkinson’s and leukaemia so naturally he feared a long, debilitating end but he also left money to set up a university chair in parapsychology. Investigating phenomena like telepathy, clairvoyance and extra-sensory perception, often linked with after-death experiences or even pre-natal existence. Does that mean Koestler was not so sure about his post-mortem fate? He has not told us – yet.

Is the Church callous and lacking compassion towards suicides? Not so. A modified order of service already exists for them. The Church always prays for self-killers. Despair for their souls is wrong because only God knows whether they might have repented before dying. The caveat ‘of sound mind’ always come in, suggesting that the priest can interpret a case charitably and so provide the full service.  That can have ludicrous effects, however. When Canon Garry Bennett took his own life (poisoning his cat before going) three Anglo-Catholic bishops – London, Winchester and Chichester – celebrated a Requiem Mass for his soul. That was going too far. Still, emblematic of the suicidal tendencies manifest in the Anglican Church.

Suicide is a great sin because it is wilful disobedience to the creator. The Church of England also has offended and disobeyed God in grave ways, e.g. the ordination of women, but, more radically, because it palms off under the name of Christianity what is actually against Christ. It has polluted and adulterated the very meaning of the word Christian. As Kierkegaard says: ‘Every Sunday in a church service God is taken for a fool.’ It is fitting this foolish and apostate church should self-destruct.

Yet suicide remains a spiritual and moral challenge. Because many a thoughtful person has felt its attraction. ‘If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If not anything is allowed then suicide is not allowed…suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin’, wrote the deepest philosopher of the last century.

But then he added, enigmatically: ‘Or is even suicide in itself neither good nor evil?’

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

============================================================
** follow on Twitter (Twitter Account not yet Authorized)
| ** friend on Facebook (#)
| ** forward to a friend (http://us7.forward-to-friend2.com/forward?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=ae61c29cb0&e=5707b9e8db)

Copyright © Fr Frank Gelli
Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp
http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=monkey_rewards&aid=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&afl=1
** unsubscribe from this list (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db&c=ae61c29cb0)
| ** update subscription preferences (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage1.com/profile?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db)