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No Funerals for Suicide Victims Says Church

March 1, 2002 7:52 am EST

NICOSIA (Reuters) - The Greek Orthodox Church in Cyprus said Thursday it would not bury people taking their own lives, declaring suicides "the greatest sin."

"The church condemns suicide and has banned church burials for those who take their lives," said a spokesman for the Holy Synod, the church ruling body.

"It is the ultimate sin which shows disrespect to the will of God."

Previously the church, a powerful institution with business interests ranging from real estate to industry and banking, had frowned on suicides but there was not an outright ban.

The church said it would only make allowances for people who were mentally disturbed with a medical certificate to prove it.

Most parish priests now turn a blind eye to the circumstances of a death to perform a funeral service. The church ruling changes that.

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How many people are there who commit suicide just for the hell of it? Aren't most, if not all, people who kill themselves usually mentally disturbed or otherwise having a rough time of it? Granted we didn't understand this a hundred years ago, and thus denied Christian burial for those who committed suicide, but in the twenty-first century, shouldn't we be past this?

Why on earth (or anywhere else for that matter) would someone deny a person their funeral?
The church shouldn't discriminate against people because of the way they died. Think of what pain that person had lived through. If someone's life was so bad they had to end it, wouldn't denying them a funeral be like another slap in the face? These people take their own lives so they can finally find peace. And happiness. And to go back to the one person they know still loves them. Yet this church wants to torment them even after death. I think this is one of the cruelest ideas I have ever, EVER had to comprehend.

How on earth can any Church say this.

How on earth do they know what was going on in that poor tormented person's mind at the time when they took that action.

Where is Charity/love in the action to deny them a funeral ?

I always thought that Christ said we were to love our neighbour.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I am just guessing that since suicide is so completely against the Church and the Church tells us that in doing so we die with a severe mortal sin on our souls. Some would maybe call this the sin against the Holy Spirit which Jesus says cannot be forgiven, so they feel the person was not truly Orthodox and they are not going to celebrate this person.

Just thinking allowed and trying to figure it out myself. God Bless.

IC XC NIKA,
-Nik!
http://YourCatholic.com

Mor,

Of course your right. This is why many people don't like to have anything to do with "orginized religion". Actually it takes total dispare coupled with courage to commit suicide. Of course if your faced with physical torture from enemies or disease then it takes courage and fortitude to live.

I've known persons that have taken their own life. And I think mankind is way behind in understanding the importance of mental health. Mental health is every bit important as physical health... and at certain times it may be even more important. Unbeknown to the modern secular man (or even religious man I suppose also) religion (the five great), it's mystical reality when sought and practiced, is probably the greatest vehical to mental health and fitness. I certainly wished I realized this in my younger years.

Where I accept that suicide is a sin - life is not ours to take even if it is our own , I still feel uncomfortable about this.

I find myself asking do we know what goes on in the person's mind immediately before death under those circumstances. Do they make an act of contrition for this action ? If they do, God hears it even if we don't. He is always merciful to those who confess their sins.

Love the sinner not the sin.

This report is only half-correct.

What it actually should report is that an Orthodox Cypriot, who commits suicide, is banned from a funeral service within the katholikon (temple), but a grave-side funeral service is allowed, even if it is penitential in character.

Objectively speaking, this practice in not an innovation, but is one of great antiquity, whether one agrees with it or not.

Interestingly, the Evzons (elite unit) of the Greek Army have an oral tradition advocating one to "fall on your sword" rather than surrender which, from the Greek perspective, is the only noble thing for a soldier to do.

I think the Church of Greece looks the other way, in this instance.

ER

Xrisi Aygi

[ 03-03-2002: Message edited by: Ephraim Reynolds ]

Dear Catholicos,

Certainly, the denial of a funeral to a suicide is an ancient tradition of the Church, modified by circumstances as Ephraim indicated and by others.

Executed traitors are also denied church funerals, if I am not mistaken, or at least in former times.

My grandfather was a priest who was also a chaplain for the anti-communist underground.

The partisans hanged a man for "ratting" on a parisan unit to the soviets that resulted in the deaths of seven young partisans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

The man's widow went to my grandfather to ask him to serve his funeral, but the parisans had, by letter, warned him that the man was a traitor and therefore he was to have no funeral. Of course, for my grandfather to disobey meant execution for him as well!

Also, soldiers who commit suicide rather than suffer certain torture at the hands of the enemy, as has occurred many, many times in this century, are not committing a wanton act of depravity.

There are so many mitigating circumstances surrounding suicide that we just can't know what the state of the victim was.

My Church leaves that up to God. What does your Church do?

Alex

We have to be careful here, I believe. True, we should keep in mind the state of such a person who commits this terrible sin; but let us not find ourselves condoning it in any way. Suicide is murder, as sinful as killing someone else. When a murderer kills, we don't usually give the person an out because they may have been enraged at the time of the killing. Murder=murder. Shall we judge the person and say they are certainly damned? No. Should we pray for the soul of the person and hope God has mercy? Of course. However, as someone already pointed out, I have always believed that this may be the "unforgivable sin" against the Holy Spirit that our LORD speaks of.

We must all practice restraint and prudence when dealing with such a horrific manner.

Columcille

Dear Alex,

To tell you the truth, I don't know what our Church does as far as funerals for those who take their own lives. I would hope that, in light of current understandings of psychology, any strict viewpoint they may have taken in the past is now tempered, at least by way of economy on a person by person basis.

Dear Columcille,

I understand what you're saying, but I still think those who take their own lives are due more sympathy than those who take the lives of others. It's true that murder is murder and is charged as that, even if the murderer was enraged at his victim. But suicide is a complex thing, more complex than the situation you bring up, in my opinion anyway.

Another thing to consider is that Churches generally give funerals even for murderers, or so I've been led to believe all this time. So to deny a funeral to someone who already had so rough a time of it that they saw ending it themselves as the only way out, but not to deny a funeral to someone who took it upon himself to end the life of another (and in some cases, we don't know if they ever repented/went to confession, etc) seems to me a great injustice.

As my understanding of the funeral service is that it asks for forgiveness of the deceased's sins and for merciful judgement, etc., then in one sense, no one should be denied a funeral except for the weightiest of causes, since I don't remember the service approving of any sins. Giving one for a murderer but not for a suicide victim is to me preposterous.

If we really want to deny someone, anyone, who takes their own life by suicide, it should only, in my opinion, be for someone who did so willingly, not because they were depressed or what not, but because they wanted to "stick it" to God by their pride-full control of their lives and/or a denial of the final resurrection. That kind of thing cuts you off from Christian faith, as I see it, and then merits a denial of funeral.

As an aside, I remember reading once about a Pakistani Catholic bishop who protested this or that governmental policy under that moron Nawaz Sharif by shooting himself in the head or some other method of suicide. This was a Catholic, a bishop no less...and he wasn't ill...he just wanted to protest a bad govt. policy. Now that means he should've known what he was doing, and that it was mortally sinful, etc., but I don't think I ever read that he was denied a funeral...I'm not sure, there may have been a telegram sent by the Pope to his diocese, but I don't know that one for sure...what does one do with such a problem? How does one address that?

Dear Catholicos and Columcille,

St Peter Mohyla, Orthodox Catholic Metropolitan of Kyiv stated in his catechism that even if we see someone commit a grave sin and that person dies, we, as Christians, are obligated to pray to God on behalf of that person, asking God not to punish that person, but to forgive that person and receive him/her into His eternal Life.

I like that . . .

Alex

Me too, Alex!

Me three

Columcille

I thought that the only people to be denied christian burial were those who have been excommunicated.


David