Let's go now to Ava. Welcome. Thank you. Hi, Patrick. What is the Catholic's

Church view on suicide? Well, in the catechism, the church is very clear that suicide is something

that we recognize people who commit suicide. I got an email from somebody yesterday saying,

people don't commit suicide. Yes, they do. I won't get into the polemic here, but people

who commit suicide very often, if not most often, are driven to it by some very strong

external force beyond their ability to withstand.

So it could be a mental illness, it could be grave fear, it could be any number of things,

because it's so unnatural for one to take his own life.

And we have such a strong will to live.

It's just built into us.

If you've ever had like a near drowning experience,

it's even wired into your body. If you've ever had that experience, you know that suddenly,

if you feel like you're drowning, the body just takes over and starts thrashing. You don't even

have to think about doing anything. The body just sort of struggles mightily to stay alive if your oxygen,

for example, is being blocked. And in the same way, the church recognizes that people who have

this innate will to live must be going through some kind of extreme duress in order to even

consider, much less carry out the act of

suicide. So we'll start with that. The church in her compassion recognizes these really serious

problems. Nonetheless, the church also says that suicide, like any other word that ends inside, C-I-D-E,

so fratricide is killing of your brother, matricide killing your mother, the killing of your father, genocide is killing of whole people's, suicide is

killing of oneself. And the church says that these indeed are intrinsically evil acts, and you can

never justify on moral grounds killing yourself.

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