Man Commits Suicide Inside Notre Dame

Some 1,500 visitors were cleared out of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris after a man put a letter on the altar of the 850-year-old monument Tuesday, pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head.

It’s the first suicide in decades at the landmark site, Monsignor Patrick Jacquin, the cathedral’s rector, told The Associated Press.

“It’s unfortunate, it’s dramatic, it’s shocking,” Jacquin said.  The motives for the suicide, and the contents of the man’s letter, were unclear.

The Paris prosecutor’s office identified the man as 78-year-old Dominique Venner.

Venner’s blog describes him as a historian and essayist, and includes description of his involvement in the campaign against France’s new law authorizing gay marriage. In some posts he criticizes “massive immigration” and what he describes as encroaching Islam; others include historical analysis of revolution or American-European relations.

It says he fought with French forces against Algerian independence fighters a half-century ago in a war that ended with France losing its most prized colony.

Police ushered people out of the cathedral after the shooting, Interior Minister Manuel Valls told reporters from the grand stone plaza in front of Notre Dame. “We call for compassion,” he said.

“Notre Dame is the cathedral of Paris, one of the capital’s – and the country’s – most beautiful monuments, so we realize how symbolic this event truly is.”

It’s highly unusual for the cathedral, visited by some 13 million people from around the world every year, to be evacuated.

Police, the Paris prosecutor and church employees gathered inside the cathedral, while puzzled tourists crowded outside on the island in the Seine River that has been home to the cathedral since the 12th century.

The cathedral reopened for an evening service that church officials said would include a prayer for the man who committed suicide and other struggling souls.

Tuesday’s death comes less than a week after another unusual suicide in central Paris, when a man shot himself in front of a dozen schoolchildren at a private Catholic school in the French capital.

Jacquin said a few people had committed suicide by jumping from Notre Dame’s two towers, but he had no knowledge of anyone ever committing suicide on the altar. The Eiffel Tower occasionally shuts down because of suicides or attempts to jump off its ledges.

Source

UPDATE:  Topless Woman Arrested At Notre Dame Cathedral

A topless activist of the FEMEN movement was arrested inside Notre Dame Cathedral Wednesday, one day after far-right essayist and historian Dominique Vesser committed suicide in the Paris landmark.

The bare-chested woman was photographed in front of the altar, pointing a fake gun at her mouth. The slogan “May Fascists Rest In Hell” was written across her torso.

FEMEN leader Inna Schevchenko commented to Le HuffPost that the protest was a message to “anyone who supports fascism and who honored the memory of the extreme-right militant who committed suicide at Notre Dame.”

On Tuesday, 78-year-old far-right activist Dominique Venner took his own life in front of the altar inside the Cathedral. According to the Associated Press, Venner ran a blog that included pieces criticizing immigration and gay marriage.

On its Facebook page, FEMEN France called the topless activist “FEMEN’s angel of Death”…

The Cathedral is desecrated.

 

Funeral Homily

By a Father whose son committed suicide…

View this document on Scribd

 

Protestants More Suicidal than Catholics: Study

Reported on in the Toronto Sun:

Religion may play a role in determining whether someone will take their own life, suggests new research that shows suicide rates are higher in Protestant countries than in Catholic ones.

Researchers from the University of Warwick in England analyzed data from Prussia in the 19th and 21st centuries, as well as modern data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

“We used the 19th century data because at this time virtually everyone adhered to a religious denomination and religion pervaded virtually all aspects of life. In Prussia, both Protestants and Catholics were non-minorities living together in one state and the two religions give a basis for comparison,” lead author Sascha Becker said in a press release.

“The results were quite striking, in the 19th century suicide rates among Protestants in Prussia were roughly three times as high as among Catholics.”

To broaden their perspective, the researchers also looked at data from 10 OECD countries in which either Protestants or Catholics still made up more than 85% of the population in 2000. The suicide rate in Protestant countries was 15.5 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants compared to 8.9 suicides in Catholic countries.

“Even today, countries that are majority Protestant tend to have substantially higher suicide rates than those which are majority Catholic, suggesting that the relation of religion and suicide remains a vital topic,” said Becker, adding that the two religions’ views on individuality and sin could be a factor.

“When life hits hard, a Catholic can rely on a stronger community which might help him to cope. Secondly, Protestantism stresses the importance of God’s grace alone and not by any merit of man’s own work, whereas Catholicism allows for God’s judgment to be affected by man’s deeds and sins. As a consequence, committing suicide entails the prospect of foregoing paradise for Catholics but not for Protestants,” Becker said.

What’s more, Catholics believe in confessing sins, and suicide is the only sin you can’t confess.

“Suicide is affected by all these factors — the structure of the religious community, strongly held views about God’s grace, and the impossibility of confessing the sin of suicide,” Becker said. “As a result, we conclude that religion matters in life and death.”

 

Man and Woman Die in Murder-Suicide at Texas Church Altar

Some kind of terrible evil at work here:

Investigators in Texas were trying to understand  late Thursday what led to an apparent murder-suicide inside a Helotes church  earlier that day.

Officers believe Manuel Rodriguez, 51, shot and  killed 54-year-old Zeferina Castillo before turning the gun on himself, the San  Antonio Express reported.

The bodies of the pair were found Wednesday  afternoon near the altar of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic  Church in Helotes, the Houston Chronicle reported. Neither of the pair, who  both lived in nearby San Antonio, was a parishioner at the church.

Police spokesman Anthony Burgess said, “All we know  is they were involved — apparently for a while. And what ‘a while’ is, I can’t  really define that.”

Investigators have determined that Rodriquez shot  Castillo several times in the upper torso before firing a single bullet into his  own head. They do not know what the man’s motivation was.

Rodriguez and Castillo were reported to have arrived  at the church in separate vehicles and walked in calmly. “There was no push, no  grab, no tussle. It looked like they were just walking into church,” Burgess  said.

Motion-sensitive CCTV cameras in the church recorded  the man and woman walking toward the altar but stopped recording when the pair  stood still, police lieutenant Elliott Rodriguez told the Chronicle.

Shots were heard at about 3:00pm local time, and a  police officer later found two bodies close together on the floor between a  baptismal font and two steps that led to the altar, with a pistol between  them.

They were the only ones in the church at the time of  the shooting, Rodriguez said.

 

10% of Suicides Involve Illness

Secondhand Smoke:

Is anyone surprised? According to the British Medical Association Journal 10%–a likely under count–of suicides involve people with physical illnesses.  The Telegraph has this excerpt:

At least 10 per cent of suicides that take place in England involve people with either a chronic or terminal illness. It is likely that this figure may be a significant underestimate, as we also found anecdotal evidence that some coroners currently choose not to include relevant health information within their inquest records, which are frequently the main input to PCTs’ suicide audits. We found that there was an average figure of 2.1 per cent of suicides involving terminal illness across the PCTs that responded, and an average of 10.6 per cent involving chronic illness, there was also an average of 21.4 per cent involving ‘some specific form of physical illness or health condition’. These figures cannot simply be added together, as some PCTs informed us that they had included the same suicide case within more than one category. However, they do indicate that our estimate of at least 10 per cent of suicides nationally involving some form of serious physical illness (either chronic or terminal) is a robust and conservative one.

Here’s a link to the extract (BMJ 2011; 343:d5464:

Do we want to increase this appalling number?  If so, we couldn’t do a better job than we are, what with assisted suicide advocates, law enforcement, and media increasingly winking at–and even endorsing–suicide to alleviate physical suffering.  Unless we reverse course and aggressively engage in suicide prevention no matter what the cause–not just some so-called “irrational suicides”–this woeful count will only grow.

Army Suicide Rate Hits New High

Time:

Just when you’re thinking the Army may have turned the corner on its troops killing themselves, a new number surfaces that dashes those hopes. Friday afternoon the Army said it suffered a record 32 suspected suicides in July, the most since it began releasing monthly data two years ago.

The Army is waging war on suicide just as seriously as it has been fighting for nearly a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq. Commanders are immensely frustrated by their inability to drive down the rate, which is demoralizing and depressing to the troops, their families, and the nation. President Obama has even gotten involved, deciding last month that he would send condolence letters to the families of those service personnel who had killed themselves in combat zones.

Last month’s total — averaging more than one suicide a day — included 22 active-duty troops and 10 reservists. It eclipsed the prior record of 31 set in June 2010. “While the high number of potential suicides in July is discouraging,” said General Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the Army, “we are confident our efforts aimed at increasing individuals’ resiliency, while reducing incidence of at-risk and high-risk behavior across the force, are having a positive impact.”…

Read more here.

Experiencing salvation and the life-renewing power that is found in Christ Jesus is crucial to leading a restored, healed, hope-filled and new life. The role of faith should never be discounted or sold short for fad, innovative, humanist, psychological answers. Unless that is noted and changed, I’m afraid little else will reverse these sad stats.

If you or someone you love needs help, call the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA here.

Death of Priest Ruled a Suicide

A real shame:

The death of a Roman Catholic priest in Springfield, MA has been ruled a suicide.

Police said Monday that the Rev. Paul Archambault (ARCH’-am-bault) died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His body was found Sunday at the Sacred Heart rectory.

Archambault said Mass on Saturday at St. Mary’s in Hampden, and was scheduled to return Sunday. When he did not arrive, parish members contacted Sacred Heart.
Police say there was no note.

A Springfield Diocese spokesman says Archambault was last seen publicly Saturday night at Baystate Medical Center where he was chaplain.

Bishop Timothy McDonnell said in a statement that the 42-year-old Archambault was “a good and pastoral priest, a caring chaplain, and a devout man” and prayed that God would relieve the “burdens he found unbearable.”

He was ordained in 2005.

Male Nurse Commits Suicide at Hospital

IOL News:

A nurse committed suicide at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Johannesburg, the Gauteng health department said on Monday.

“Around lunch time yesterday (Sunday), other students noted that Musawakhe Mazibuko, a third year male student nurse, was planning to commit suicide and they called internal security personnel immediately,” spokesman Sello Mokoena said.

They called the police, including a negotiator, paramedics, the nursing manager on duty and Musawakhe’s sister Thandeka, after he asked to see her.

The 24-year-old jumped from a 12th floor window.

Gauteng health MEC Ntombi Mekgwe sent her condolences to the Mazibuko family.

“Our prayers are with you during this difficult time and we will continue to ask the Lord to give you strength to deal with your loss.”

On Physician-Assisted Suicide

As you by now know, Dr Death (Jack Kevorkian) is dead. Well on the subject of assisted-suicide, I see that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is preparing to make a timely statement on the whole physician-assisted suicide matter:

(CNS) — When the U.S. bishops consider a proposed policy statement on physician-assisted suicide during their mid-June meeting in Seattle, they will be taking on for the first time as a body of bishops one of the most divisive issues in U.S. society today.

A Gallup Poll released May 31 showed that Americans are more closely divided on the issue of physician-assisted suicide than on any other issue, including abortion, out-of-wedlock births, gay and lesbian relations or medical testing on animals.

Asked whether doctor-assisted suicide was morally acceptable or morally wrong, 45 percent said they thought it was acceptable and 48 percent said they believed it to be wrong — a result that fell within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said the time is right for the statement, titled “To Live Each Day With Dignity.”

“After years of relative inaction following legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Oregon in 1994, the assisted suicide movement has shown a strong resurgence in activity,” said the cardinal in a news release about the proposed statement…

“The church needs to respond in a timely and visible way to this renewed challenge, which will surely be pursued in a number of states in the years to come,” he said.

Although the U.S. bishops’ Administrative Committee issued a brief “Statement on Euthanasia” in 1991, the bishops have never commented on the topic as a group. The 1991 statement said euthanasia violates divine law, human dignity and basic “American convictions about human rights and equality.”

In the works since November, the proposed policy statement aims to counter two arguments of assisted suicide proponents — that their agenda affirms patients’ “choices” and expresses “compassion” for suffering…

There’s more here.

Dr Death is Dead

Via Dr Jim West:

CNN just reported (in an email alert)

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, 83, has died after a blood clot lodged in his heart, according to the Detroit Free Press.  His lawyer told the paper it appears a blood clot from his leg broke free and lodged in his heart. “It was peaceful. He didn’t feel a thing,” the lawyer said.

He does now…

Wikipedia has more on the assisted-suicide doctor Kevorkian here.