Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Was it Suicide?

Was it Suicide?

Last updated on: January 25, 2015 at 12:56 pm by David Cruz-Uribe

Was it Suicide? 2015-01-25T12:56:00-05:00 David Cruz-Uribe

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Catholic Transcript, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Hartford, has started a new feature: a monthly column on bioethics by Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a priest from Fall River, MA and director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. Fr. Pacholczyk’s column this month was on physician assisted suicide, a topic of considerable interest here in Connecticut: it has been raised a couple times in the state assembly, and supporters will probably attempt to bring it up again this year. (The column appears in several papers; the particular one I am interested in has not been posted on the Transcript website, but can be found here.)

In his column, he commented on a recent article from Time magazine (reprinted here, I believe) that drew a connection between physician assisted suicide and the people who died after they jumped out of the Twin Towers on 9/11. I want to quote him in full:

In the public discussions that have ensued, some have ventured to argue that suicide under such desperate circumstances [dying of brain cancer] would, in fact, be justifiable. A recent on-line article from Time magazine observed that few fault those who were trapped on the top floors of the Twin Towers on 9/11 when they jumped to their deaths below as the flames surged around them. Similarly, the article suggests that those who face the prospect of a difficult, pain-racked death from a terminal disease should be able to take their own life through physician-assisted suicide without fault or blame.

For those jumping out of the Twin Towers, however, we recognize a horrific situation of desperation, and even the possibility of a kind of mental breakdown in those final panic-stricken moments. Their agonizing choice to hurl themselves out of the building to their deaths below would be, objectively speaking, a suicidal act, and would not represent a morally good choice, but their moral culpability would almost certainly be diminished, if not eliminated, by the harrowing circumstances in which they found themselves, driven by raw terror more than by anything else. Clearly, grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of suffering can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.

Until I read this I had never stopped to think about this in any careful way. Reading this column, however, my gut reaction to his argument was negative, partly because his analysis is so clinical. But, while moral intuition is important, it can be misleading. So I have had to stop and ask myself: was this suicide? And to what extent does this matter?

In a precise legal sense, it was not suicide: the NY medical examiner ruled that all the deaths in 9/11 were homicides: according to Wikipedia, they argued

A ‘jumper’ is somebody who goes to the office in the morning knowing that they will commit suicide. These people were forced out by the smoke and flames or blown out.

This designation matters legally: for instance, it affects the payment of insurance benefits, as some life insurance policies will deny claims if the policy holder commits suicide. (This may have been moot: after 9/11, no insurance company could have survived the backlash resulting from denying benefits under these circumstances, even if it were conclusively shown to have been suicide.) But it does not settle the ethical question of whether this was suicide.

This is a tricky question to answer, and while I have some ideas, I am not sure if they really resolve the issue. So I welcome commentary and corrections to what I write. On the one hand, it does seem plausible to describe the act of jumping out of a window on the 80+ story of building as an “objectively suicidal act.” Anyone doing it would know that his or her death was a certain outcome. But does this make it a suicidal act? There are similar actions which do not constitute suicide and I want to try to reason by analogy with them.

In doing so I am going to touch on the principle of double-effect. As I have said in the past, I am uncomfortable with the principle of double effect but this might be a case where it is useful. In this earlier blog post I considered the problem of ectopic pregnancies, but there was a wide-ranging and detailed discussion of the principle of double effect that at one point touched on this very question and suggested that it was not suicide. I will consider the argument made in this comment below.

The classical example of a superficially suicidal act that is not (I believe) considered suicide is a soldier who throws himself onto a hand grenade that has landed in his foxhole. In doing so he is deliberating consigning himself to death, but this is not regarded as suicide. In the same way, people who throw themselves over others to shield them from a gunman or soldiers who act in ways leading to their certain death in order to save the lives of their comrades (e.g., PFC Rodger Young in WWII) are not considered to have committed suicide, even though they knowingly brought about their own deaths by their deliberate actions.

The rationale for not calling these suicide lies in discerning the intent of the persons acting: their intention was not to commit suicide but rather to protect others at the cost of their own lives. In a word, self-sacrifice. That they would know that their actions would lead to their death is secondary to the moral analysis. This would seem to be very much in line with the principle of double effect. To apply it properly, I would have to examine more carefully the object, intent and circumstances of their actions, but I will admit that I have a hard time parsing the difference between object and intent, and so am going to go with this more informal analysis for now. (Readers are welcome to fill in the details, for or against, in the comments.)

However, while the distinction between suicide and self-sacrifice is useful, it does not fully explain the morality of their actions: self-sacrifice is not, in and of itself, a sufficient justification. For instance, a person may not donate his heart to be transplanted into another person in order to save that person’s life but resulting in his own death. (Cf. the Catechism 2296.) And here is where I get hung up in ways that bother me when I try to apply this to the case at hand. I am not sure how to distinguish between the act of throwing yourself on a grenade from the act of having your heart removed in order to save the life of another. (To avoid introducing a third party, we can pretend that robot assisted surgery is sophisticated enough that you could program a machine to remove your heart, so in fact you are removing your own heart. I have no idea if this is possible now, but I suspect it soon will be.)

The only distinction I can see lies in the circumstances and in particular in the temporal constraints surrounding the act. In the case of a soldier throwing himself on a grenade (or the other actions outlined above), these must be spontaneous, or nearly spontaneous decisions. The person making them has seconds or at most a few minutes in which to decide. The decision to sacrifice oneself by removing your own heart seems much more deliberate and drawn out. One could, I suppose, construct circumstances in which this decision must be made immediately, but even in these the time scale would be much longer—hours or days rather than minutes.

But that a decision is made under pressure does not seem to me to effect the moral status of the decision: it bears only on the moral culpability of the person making it. It might be a morally wrong act, but one’s responsibility is lessened because of the circumstances. (This is the essence of what Fr. Pacholczyk argues above.) But then I come back to my original problem: how to distinguish morally between throwing oneself on a grenade and donating one’s heart?

I want to now return to the original moral problem: the act of jumping out of a window to avoid being burned to death. Obviously, in one way this is very different from the cases considered above because there is no self-sacrifice involved. The only person affected is the person jumping. (One could imagine a hypothetical situation–not one that occurred on 9/11–where a person chooses to jump and take a small child with him/her. This provides some interesting complexity but here I want to focus on the actual case at hand.) The two points of similarity are the basic question of intention and the time constraints under which the decision is made. The question of intention is muddy because it can be read two different ways: is their intention to avoid death by burning, or is their intention to choose the manner of their death, for whatever reason believing that death by impact after jumping is preferable to death by fire. (We can guess that the latter is an easier death than the former, but it seems hard to draw objective conclusions.) In the latter case it might be argued that it is a suicidal act; in the former, I could envision an application of the principle of double effect to argue that it is not suicide, death was a foreseeable, indeed certain outcome of their actions, but it was not their intent. However, harkening back to my post on ectopic pregnancy and the principle of double effect, it seemed to me that the discussion bogged down (and the principle lost its moral utility) in hair-splitting discussions over this kind of distinction.

The issue of time constraints is also important here: in this situation, after some point the person will have to make an immediate decision: jump, or be consumed by the flames. I think this point is very important because it goes back to the original point being made by Fr. Pacholczyk. The article he was rebutting wanted to draw a moral parallel between jumping and taking barbiturates to die so as to avoid a prolonged and painful death. While these two actions seem similar, they must be done on very different time scales: weeks and possibly months in the latter case. (There are some grey areas here as well, such as a patient, in the final days of life, being given such massive doses of morphine or heroin that death is almost surely hastened. But again, let’s concentrate on the sharper distinction.)

But, as I noted above, time constraints may lessen moral culpability, but they do not seem to affect the morality of the act itself. Therefore, if my original intuition is correct, that jumping out of a window is not suicide, then we need some other grounds for distinguishing it from overdosing on barbiturates. Here is where completing the analysis of self-sacrifice above should be helpful: drawing the moral distinction between jumping on a grenade and donating ones own heart should help here.

Finally, I want to turn to the related question: what good will come from deciding that throwing oneself from a burning building is in fact suicide? Moral codes should guide our actions in a prior sense; they should not simply be there to past judgement after the fact. But I cannot envision any time we would counsel another person in this particular situation: “do not jump out the window, it is an sinful act.” So what is gained by this stance? Does it exist simply as a firebreak, as Fr. Pacholczyk uses it in his article, to draw clearer lines around actions we would counsel people against before they do them? And does this justify the potential pain such an argument would cause: e.g., the pain felt by the survivors of someone who did indeed die by throwing himself from the Twin Towers?

The short answer to all of these questions is that I am not sure, and I am interested in your thoughts on these questions.

physician assisted suicide

self-sacrifice

suicide

Previous Post

January 22, 2015

Some words about Dr. King, Part 1

Next Post

January 31, 2015 There is no Third World

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2019 A Consistent Ethic of Life Aaron Weldon Abortion absurdity Abuse Scandal Academics Adoption Advent Africa agreement/disagreement with Church teaching Alexander Schmemann Alexham Alterity America Amnesty International Anarchism angels Anglicanism Animals Annual Statistics Anthony Anxietas Apocalyptic Apophatic Appalachia Aquinas Art Atheism Atonement Augustine Authority Baptism Beauty Bible biblical criticism biblical scholarship Bioethics Bishops Black Catholics Black Theology Blackadder Blogs Books Breastfeeding Brett Salkeld Buddhism Bush administration Byzantine Catholic Calvinism Canada Canon Law Capital Punishment Capitalism Caryll Houselander Catholic Blog Awards Catholic Blogging Catholic League Catholic Social Teaching Catholic Worker Movement Catholicity CFL Charity Children Chris West Christ and Culture Christian Democracy Christian Unity Christmas Christology Church Church Doctrine Church History Climate Change Cohabitation Colbert Collegiality Communion Communism Comparative Theology Competition Conferences conscience conscience rights Consequentialism Consistent Life Ethics Consumerism Contraception Contrition Conversion Converts Coptic COVID-19 Creation Critical Thinking Cross Cuba Culture Culture of Death Culture of Life Darfur David Cruz-Uribe David Wheeler-Reed Death Death Penalty Democracy Demons Desert Fathers Devil Dialogue dignity Disability Disarmament discernment Discipleship discrimination Dissent Distributism Division Doctrine Domestic Church Dorothy Day Double Effect Doubt Down syndrome Driving Early Church Easter Eastern Churches Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Education El Salvador Election Election 2020 Ellul Embryonic Stem Cell Research Empire Energy Enlighenment Environmentalism Ephraim Radner Episcopal Church epistemology Equality Eschatology Ethics Eucharist Europe Euthanasia Evangelization Evil Evolution Excommunication F.X. Durrwell Facism Facts Fair Trade Faith Family Fashion Feddie Feminism Feminist theology Fertility Fetal Rights Fiction Film Finances First Things flags Folk Religion Food Foreign Affairs Forgiveness Frank Sheed Free Speech Freedom gay & lesbian persons Genocide George W. Bush George Weigel Gerald L. Campbell Girard/Mimetic Theory Global Warming Globalization Gnosticism Good Friday Grace Gratitude Greed Grey Cup 2009 Guadalupe Guest Post Guest Posts Gun Control Gustave Martelet Habitat for Humanity Hans Urs von Balthasar Harry Potter Hate Speech Health Health Care Healthcare Heather King Hebrew Bible Henri de Lubac Henry Karlson Herbert McCabe Heresy HHS Mandate Controversy History Holidays Holiness Holy Spirit Homiletics Homily Homosexuality Hope Hospitality How Far Can We Go? How Far Can We Go? Human Person Human Rights Humanae Vitae Humility Humor Hunger Hunting Identity Idolatry Ignacio Ellacuría Imagination Immigration In Memoriam Income Inequality Inculturation Indigenous People Individualism Inklings Intellect Interdependence Internet Interpretation Interviews Introduction Iraq War Islam Israel Jain James Alison James Martin Jazz Jesus Christ Jews Joe Biden Joe Hargrave Johann Baptist Metz John Allen John Henry Newman John Paul II John the Baptist John XXIII Jonathan Josef Pieper Joseph (the husband of Mary) Joseph Bernardin Joseph Ratzinger Josh Brumfield Journals Joy Judgment Just War Justice Kari Lundgren Karl Rahner Katerina Ivanovna Kenya Keynes Kingdom of God Kyle R. Cupp Labor Language Latin America Law Leanne Ogasawara Legion of Christ Leisure Lent Liberalism Liberation Theology Libertarianism Libya Lies Life life & dignity & responsibility of the human person Literature Little Way Liturgical music Liturgical Year Liturgy Living Simply Living Wage Local Church Lombard Lord of the Rings Louis Dupre Love M.Z. Magic Magisterium Mark DeFrancisis Mark Gordon Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Jr. Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masculinity Matt Talbot Matthew Fish Matthew Levering McCain Media Memorial Day Mennonites Mental Illness mercy Michael Iafrate Middle East militarism Miroslav Volf Mitt Romney Modesty Moral Theology Morality Mormonism Morning's Minion Mother Teresa Music Muslims Natalie Nate Wildermuth Nationalism Native Americans Nature Nazis Neuhaus New Evangelization New York City News NFP nihilism Nonviolence Not Abortion Nova's Ordo Nuclear weapons Nuns Obama Occult Old Age Opus Dei Ordination ordination of women original sin Orthodoxy Oscar Romero Other Voices Pacifism Palestine Palin Papacy Papal Peace Messages Papal Social Encyclicals Particular Affections Partisanship Patriotism Paul Paul Ryan Paul VI Peace Pentimento persecution Personalism Phantastes Philosophy PKD Planned Parenthood Pluralism Poetry Policraticus Politcal Apathy Politics Poll Pope Benedict XVI Pope Francis Pope John Paul II Pope Leo XIV Population Postcolonialsim Poverty Power Prayer Preaching Predictions Predictions for 2012 President Barack Obama priestly formation & discernment Pro-Life Progress Prophetic Witness Proportionalism Public Diplomacy Public Policy Question Quotes Rachel Maddow Racism Radical Catholic Mom Radical Catholicism Raymund Schwager Real Catholic TV Real Presence Reconciliation Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange Religion religious freedom Responsibility Ressourcement Resurrection Rick Garnett Ridiculous Crap You Never Thought You'd See Robert Barron Roe v. Wade Roman Curia Rome Russia Sacraments Saints Salvation History Sam Harris Sam Rocha Same-sex Marriage Saskatchewan Roughriders Satire School of the Americas Science Scripture Seamless Garment Second Vatican Council Seeing Sex sexual violence Sexuality Sia Sin social justice Social Security Socialism Society of Jesus Sofia Loves Wisdom Solidarity Sophia soteriology Soutenus Spirituality Sports St. Dismas St. Joseph Stanley Hauerwas Statistics Stimulus Suffering Sunday Reflections Supernatural Supreme Court Symbolism Syria Taxing Technology Terrorism The State The Tea Party The Trump Administration Theological Anthropology Theology Theotokos Thomas Merton Throwaway Culture Tim Muldoon Tim Riley Tim Tebow Time Titian Tolkien Torture Toys Trade Traditionalism Transgender Transportation Transubstantiation Trinity Truth TV U.S. Affairs Uncategorized Unions unity among people who disagree US Catholicism USCCB Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Valentine's Day Vatican Vatican II Veterans Vicarious Suffering Video Violence Virgin Mary Vocations Voluntary Associations Voluntary Poverty Voting Vox Nova vox nova blog war War and Peace War Strategy Wealth Weirdness Welfare state Women Women Priests Work Woundedness Youth

Select a Month June 2026 May 2025 February 2025 January 2025 July 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 July 2023 March 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 November 2021 September 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What happened to Jonah?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Shipwrecked Swallowed by a great fish Thrown in a lion's den Imprisoned