The Church’s Traditional Moral Teaching on Suicide (IN: Suicide and the Right to Die, ed. by J Pohier and D Mieth)

The church still holds firmly to the traditional moral criteria against the mentality & practice of direct suicide carried out with deliberation & full knowledge. Canon law aims at a more pastoral approach, limiting itself to excluding would-be suicides from holding or exercising holy orders. The traditional denial of ecclesiastical burial to suicides has been suspended. 27 ref.