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Good morning Pater First time I’m asking a question although I do follow your posts, by following them a lot of questions are answered. My question is if someone has an illness that requires treatment to keep them alive if they decide to forego that treatment would it be classed as suicide?
Answer to Question 514 Good morning. Good question and I'm not sure if I can answer it. The truth is that we often say that God has enlightened the medical profession with ways to help us recover from various illnesses and so if we believe this to be true then we should use whatever treatment is available to help us recover. But there are illnesses that cannot be cured and treatment, which can sometimes be very painful, will only prolong the inevitable for a little while. I think that people in these situations should choose how they should die. It would not be considered suicide as there is no cure so the decision would be to either accept a painful treatment which might prolong life for a while or decide to forego this treatment and die peacefully. I had a cousin who after kidney failure was on blood dialysis. He struggled for years with his illness having to go to hospital three or four times a week and spend hours on dialysis. He couldn't take the suffering any more and stopped his medication and missed his appointment and as a result died. This could be considered a suicide, but he saw no future for himself and must have believed that he had no chance of finding a donor. But what is suicide? The church condemns suicide because for someone to take his own life it means that he believes that he is beyond help and that even God can’t help him. It is then a rejection of God himself by refusing to allow God into his life to save him. God is the Source and Giver of life—life which is sustained by the Holy Spirit, Who dwells within each of us. Thus to wilfully take one’s life, is to wilfully cut oneself off from the Source of one’s life, to project a sense of hopelessness that cannot be reversed, even by God. In the case of the terminally ill, we cannot say that they have lost all hope in God, in fact we can say that they have lost all hope in the medical profession and place all they hope in God and place themselves in his hands whether they live or die
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