What kind of personal pain would cause a 42-year-old pastor to abandon his family, his calling and even life itself? Members of a Baptist church in Hickory, North Carolina, are asking that question after their pastor committed suicide in his parked car in September.
Those who counsel pastors say Christian culture, especially southern evangelicalism, creates the perfect environment for depression. Pastors suffer in silence, unwilling or unable to seek help or even talk about it. Sometimes they leave the ministry. Occasionally the result is the unthinkable.
Experts say clergy suicide is a rare outcome to a common problem. But Baptists in the Carolinas are soul searching after a spate of suicides and suicide attempts by pastors. In addition to the recent suicide of David Treadway, two pastors in North Carolina attempted suicide and three in South Carolina died by suicide, all in the past four years.
This is very thought-provoking. Some Anglican dioceses here in the UK have an excellent system which allows the bishop or archdeacon to refer a priest to a therapist. The diocese pays for the therapy; but there is no communication between the therapist and the diocese regarding the patient, so the priest knows that there is complete confidentiality. One of the problems for clergy is, let’s face it, the obligation always to present a cheerful face and to be nice to people. Yet as human beings we are sometimes downhearted, like everyone else we suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and struggle for a bit to find our equilibrium.
Pastors probably have the same amount of endogenous depressions per capita as the general population. The question for me is whether there is something about the denomination, profession or regional culture that increases the chances of an exogenous (reactive) depression. There may be a theological component where Protestant individualism may make a pastor more vulnerable to isolation. When I worked as a crisis intervention worker many years ago, the majority of folks who I interviewed who expressed a religious preference were Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are injunctions against suicide in some denominations. I believe the Roman Catholic Church views suicide as a mortal sin.
#2: The Catechism of the Catholic Church does describe suicide as sin, however, it reads (in section 2283): “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”
#3. Tom,
Thanks for the clarification. I wonder if that is a revision of prior teaching from the Roman Church. I looked it up and the Roman Church parses the act of suicide into a number of different possibilities.
In terms of pastoral practice, I can add to the above. Like many, perhaps most priests I would say that anybody taking their own life is almost certainly not in full possession of their faculties, and thus not culpable for their actions. I have, however, on rare occasions found myself counselling people seriously contemplating suicide. My response has not been to threaten hell, but to sketch out the terrible lifelong impact on the loved ones they would leave behind.