Has the Anglo-Catholic understanding of suicide changed in the 20th-21st century enough to render Chesterton's comparison with martyrdom irrelevant?
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In "Orthodoxy" G.K. Chesterton compares in multiple places the difference in attitude between people who kill themselves and people who let themselves be killed for Jesus' sake.
> The Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide was not what is so often affirmed in modern morals. It was not a matter of degree. It was not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and that the self-slayer in exaltation fell within the line, the self-slayer in sadness just beyond it. The Christian feeling evidently was not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too far. The Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at opposite ends of heaven and hell. One man flung away his life; he was so good that his dry bones could heal cities in pestilence. Another man flung away life; he was so bad that his bones would pollute his brethren's. I am not saying this fierceness was right; but why was it so fierce?
I don't believe that Christians will necessarily disallow suicides to be buried with everyone else these days. Has anything in Christian doctrine changed or is has the "fierceness" that Christians once hated suicide disappeared with modern understanding of psychology? Does this affect Chesterton's argument, is it yet another example he uses that's lost on the modern reader?
_Expecting answers from a Chestertonian viewpoint if you can muster up one, otherwise something from Anglican / Catholic doctrine_
Asked by Peter Turner
(34456 rep)
Oct 12, 2021, 03:53 AM
Last activity: Dec 18, 2021, 05:26 PM
Last activity: Dec 18, 2021, 05:26 PM