The Pope, today, is mainly seen as a spiritual leader. I find that wrong ideas of the Pope’s role are one of the most common ways non-Catholics find to misunderstand Catholicism. He’s not the CEO of an international corporation, he doesn’t own the Church’s assets, he is not infallible, does not create doctrine, and he does not have any special direct insight into theological truth.
Sorry, this is a tangent. Just bugs me.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1994:
2280 “Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.”
This is in the section on suicide and euthanasia. The Catechism makes special note that (unlike what was previously taught), we can’t know the ultimate fate of suicides and may not judge them. It also notes that palliative care, and withdrawal of ‘overzealous’ care of the terminally ill are or may be acts of charity and are not euthanasia.
Catholic doctrine does NOT say suffering is good. Sorry. Not in the Catechism anywhere.
I can’t speak to what individual Catholics believe to be miracles and typically the official Church does not make any comment on these either way. Abortion is really another topic, although obviously it is connected.
The document I posted above actually does contain some statement about the Church’s position on suffering;
I am not Catholic and was not raised as Catholic, so I can’t speak as to what is taught to young Catholics, but via Wiki I find that the catechism says this on the subject of “redemptive suffering”;
The intimation here, as far as I understand it, appears to be that while Jesus’ sacrifice was unique and tantamount, that it is possible through experiencing physical suffering that His followers can also, in a lesser but not insignificant way, participate in redeeming their own souls or the souls of others.
Again, this isn’t stuff I personally subscribe to and I defer to our resident experts on Catholic doctrine (paging Bricker, would Bricker please pick up the white courtesy phone?), but from what I’m seeing here, Catholic doctrine on the virtue of suffering follows something along the lines of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 19:12 about people who choose to become eunuchs for the sake of salvation; “He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”
“Thou shalt not kill”, comes to mind.
Being sick is not a crime, so the death penalty exceptions do not apply. Being sick is not an act of war, so the soldier’s exceptions do not apply.
Again, thou shalt not kill; it applies to oneself, too.
Being mentally ill is not a crime, therefore there is no justification for killing oneself. Biblically, this is pretty straight forward.
You have it backwards. The church came first, and early Christians wrote the scriptures to clarify what the church taught.
The Scriptures, such as the letters of Saint Paul, only addressed theological issues that were controversial in the early church. No early Christian sect believed suicide or euthanasia were morally acceptable, therefore Saints Paul, Matthew, Luke, etc, had no need to specifically address these practices.
Contemporary documents address related topics. The mid 1st century document known as the Didache specifically condemns abortion for instance, even though the topic was not addressed documents that became scripture. While even the Didache may not specifically address euthanasia, it gives no hint that the practice would be accepted, either.
Basically, Scripture and other Christian documents served a specific teaching purpose. The mere absence of a condemnation should not imply acceptance. Humans are uniquely talented at creating vice; if scripture attempted to condemn every possible evil that humans might commit, it would be a thousand volumes long, and still incomplete.
Bearing one’s burdens in imitatio Christi is not the same as “suffering is good”. I didn’t find anything in doctrine to support seeking out suffering or enduring suffering that could be evaded without harm to oneself or others.
Like many other religions, Christianity acknowledges that suffering is a condition of life, and offers spiritual guidance as to how to deal with it.
While the discussion about the theological history of some of these beliefs is interesting, I’m not sure it’s particularly relevant as an explanation for the beliefs of many of our contemporaries. I think there’s a socially relevant question about why it is that those beliefs have been so strongly politicized by evangelicals and the like who couldn’t quote the relevant scripture or theological history if their lives depended on it. I suspect they couldn’t care less about the theological origins of what they simply “know” is right. I’m astounded to this day by how many of them came out in strong and active opposition to ending life support in the Terri Schiavo case, for example, a position that they could not have justified on either theological or factual grounds, a position that was medically flat-out wrong, and a position that they were prepared to support with figurative pitchforks and flaming torches.
Take for instance these points from Flyer in post #30 – I don’t know whether s/he believes this or not, but the point is that many do:
Point one–life is a gift from God.
Point two–God has a plan for every life.
For many, the explanation for their beliefs about euthanasia, abortion, stem cell research, and other such issues need not be any more complicated than that. For them, it’s a matter of simple faith, immune to facts or logic, cobbled together from vague recollections of Biblical precepts and nothing more.
Read the thread before you post. The original hebrew word was “murder” not “kill”.
UDS, thanks for your summary.
The OT that the early Christians considered most authoritative was of course the Septuagint, so while the discussion on what the Hebrew text says is interesting, it’s probably less relevant here than the Greek text.
This is an excellent summary. I’d just add that while there were apparently no early Christians making the case for suicide, those controversies did arise later (in the 5th century re: the virgin martyrs issue, and again with the Bogomils and Cathars in the Middle Ages) and it was at that time the Catholic Church put forth strong explicit statements of what had been implicit before. Augustine in the aforementioned ‘City of God’ passage makes the case that thou shalt not kill applies to oneself.
If one believed that God only guided the original authors, rather then subsequent translators, interpreters, editors etc. then maybe that might be relevant.
Thank you for this, and for post #38. It still leaves me a bit puzzled, though. You say that “you don’t have to have an established penal code to have a concept of murder”, but I think the concept of “murder” does presume some societal moral standard according to which a killing can be judged to be murder, or not-murder. Most dictionary definitions of “murder” will feature the word “unlawful” at an early point, and it seems to me that if this commandment can be expressed as “do not kill unlawfully” or “do not kill criminally” or similar then if we are to understand what the commandment forbids and what it doesn’t forbid there’s an obvious gap that needs to be filled by an appeal to something outside the commandment itself.
This presents a practical problem. On a strict reading, if euthanasia is socially/legally sanctioned, then euthanizing somebody is not a breach of the commandment. But, then, if killing people in a pogrom is socially/legally sanctioned, then that’s not a breach of the commandment either. If the community chooses not to criminalise, say, the exposure of unwanted infants or the painless killing of those with a learning disability or a hereditary disease, does this commandment offer any basis for objecting to that choice?
There’s also a theological problem. If we assume that the commandments derive their authority from their author, G-d, if this commandment is appealing to some external authority, what external authority can possibly be higher than the will of G-d? Or is the appeal taken to be to some other commandment or revelation of God which illuminates which killings are murder and which are not? And if so, does the interpretive tradition identify that commandment or revelation?
This is I think all tied the very Catholic idea that the state of the soul is more important than the state of the body or mind salvation-and-eternity-wise. Often suicide comes when the mind or body is in despair, a sad way to face eternity. If you can survive and ‘pass through’ despair then a peace and acceptance will accompany your death. This is an outcome greatly to be desired. Cutting the process short deprives you of closure, and is kind of presumptuous.
The Catholic idea of the Sacrament of Healing (used to be Extreme Unction or Last Rites) is not ‘Give me a miracle cure’ but a prayer that you find peace and acceptance whatever happens including your healing, your death or your continued suffering. [URL=“The chief Biblical text concerning anointing of the sick is James 5:14–15: “Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the Church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. And their prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make them well. And if they have committed sins, these will be forgiven.” Matthew 10:8, Luke 10:8–9 and Mark 6:13 are also quoted in this regard.”/URL]
This is hard to explain clearly but Catholics pray ‘now and at the hour of our death’ every day. [URL=“in 1493, a third part is added to the Hail Mary, which is repeated in Pynson’s English translation a few years later in the form: “Holy Mary moder of God praye for us synners. Amen.”. The official recognition of the Ave Maria in its complete form, though foreshadowed in the words of the Catechism of the Council of Trent, as quoted at the beginning of this article, was finally given in the Roman Breviary of 1568.”/URL]
Well, apparently my ability to cite URL’s is deficient. I would try to edit but I do not expect to do better. 
Perhaps another day. Both were just Wikipedia. Now I’ll mess up again for double-posting. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Well no, my original question is “where did the opposition to Euthanasia come from? It’s not explicit in the original scripture.” So how and when the meaning of the word changed is precisely relevant to my OP. Its apparent to me now that first Tertullian and then later Augustine are basically responsible for the broadening of “Thou Shalt not kill” to include Suicide and Euthanasia, thats precisely the information I wanted to get from this thread.
And to play Devil’s Advocate (no pun intended). . .
From my limited understanding on Judaism, the Talmud and Torah are murky at best on the concept of an afterlife, although there apparently are some rabbinical tradtions that say there’s an afterlife. So, even if suicide, or any other proscription, is a sin, then. . . so what? What’s the penalty? There’s no Revelation, Rapture, or anything similar in the Old Testament, right? The writings tell you how you should live your life, not what you need to do make sure you end up in Heaven when you die.
Help a clueless goy out.
I don’t believe Judaism believes in eternal damnation anyway. Its similar to Buddhism in believing that eventually everyone get saved, you just might have to go through a very very long purgatory period to get there.
At least thats my understanding as a non-jew but I believe its very much a grey area in Judaism where multiple theories are accepted.
I think it’s earlier than Tertullian. As far as we can tell, Christians condemned suicide (in general) from the beginning of Christianity .
Whether that was rooted in their reading of the Septuagint, in the teachings of Jesus or something else , is a separate question.
In any case, it’s irrelevant to say 'the Hebrew text says murder, not kill ’ because most Christians then and now aren’t going off the Hebrew text. the earliest Christians used the Septuagint, which apparently has a term that’s intermediate between ‘kill’ and ‘murder’.
Opposition to suicide, abortion, infant exposure, etc are all things that characterised Christianity pretty much from the beginning, as far as we can tell.
And SFAIK these were all part of their inheritance from Judaism. Whether these positions in Judaism were grounded in a reading of the fifth/sixth commandment, I can’t say.
But I think it’s a mistake to assume that either Christian or Jewish moral thinking runs along the lines of “this passage of scripture forbids X; therefore X is wrong”. I suspect both traditions more usually run the other way - “X is wrong, which explains why this passage of scripture forbids it”. Consequently looking for a specific text which deals explicitly with suicide or euthanasia is an absurdly reductive way of trying to understand a Jewish or Christian perspective on those issues. A more holistic reading of scripture and other sources may yield values and standards which, when brought to bear on a question relating to suicide or euthenasia, may point to a certain answer.
Right, exactly,