I completely agree with this "description" of the situation we might call the "attraction toward self-killing to avoid pain".Tom Mazanec wrote:...
And as to the morality of suicide:
From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Positive and direct suicide perpetrated without God's consent always constitutes a grave injustice towards Him. To destroy a thing is to dispose of it as an absolute master and to act as one having full and independent dominion over it; but man does not possess this full and independent dominion over his life, since to be an owner one must be superior to his property. God has reserved to himself direct dominion over life; He is the owner of its substance and He has given man only the serviceable dominion, the right of use, with the charge of protecting and preserving the substance, that is, life itself. Consequently suicide is an attempt against the dominion and right of ownership of the Creator. To this injustice is added a serious offence against the charity which man owes to himself, since by his act he deprives himself of the greatest good in his possession and the possibility of attaining his final end. Moreover, the sin may be aggravated by circumstances, such as failure in conjugal, paternal, or filial piety, failure in justice or charity, if by taking his life one eludes existing obligations of justice or acts of charity, which he could and should perform. That suicide is unlawful is the teaching of Holy Scripture and of the Church, which condemns the act as a most atrocious crime and, in hatred of the sin and to arouse the horror of its children, denies the suicide Christian burial. Moreover, suicide is directly opposed to the most powerful and invincible tendency of every creature and especially of man, the preservation of life. Finally, for a sane man deliberately to take his own life, he must, as a general rule, first have annihilated in himself all that he possessed of spiritual life, since suicide is in absolute contradiction to everything that the Christian religion teaches us as to the end and object of life and, except in cases of insanity, is usually the natural termination of a life of disorder, weakness, and cowardice.
AND (accent on the "AND") we are also "allowed" (by God) to exercise our salient characteristic, which is free will.
My own opinion, as to the "damnation" dimension of suicide, is that since there is ALWAYS a time interval between the "commitment" to suicide and death, that the eternal (irrevocable) nature of the act NEARLY ALWAYS "shocks" the person (before actual death) into regret, and regret (in this context) is just another name for abject contrition, which is the only true requirement for forgiveness,.. thus initiating a rather "severe" form of "learning" that we call "purgatory".
That learning not learned is called "hell", and is "endless".
There are certainly many (way too many) persons whose "egos" (accumulated resentments) have devoured their "person-ness" ("soul") allowing them, via the gift of free will, to actively choose "non-regret" for that which should be regretted, and experience that for "eternity" (whatever that may come to mean for them).
So, I'm not a believer in the heresy of "the empty hell". (Or Annihilationism either, for that matter.)
The Church, as an institution, spiritual and temporal, is (rightly) "in the business" of not encouraging bad stuff, and in general, suicide is "bad stuff". Murder is also not encouraged. Killing is slightly less not encouraged. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...
Doing "irrevocable final pain relief" without the necessary active groundwork greatly increases the probability that regret will ensue when the stakes are the highest.
No one talks anyone out of suicide. The awareness of how thoroughly one has prepared for death eventually comes to us all.
The "attraction toward suicide" is a very good sign that thought and work need to be done to avoid results we really don't want.
(God does not condemn. We do. That is the answer to the question of evil. Material imperfection and free will allows for evil. Material imperfection was "asked for" by "life" so as to learn, and granted. Free will was the [necessary] "price" for the ability to learn.)