In Suicide, Who Sinned?

SUICIDE IS A SIN. As a Catholic, that’s what I was taught. Life is a gift from God; only God can take it away. Suicide chooses despair over God.

But I’ve never understood suicide to be an individual sin. It’s a communal one—based in a profound failure of love.

This past spring, two young men committed suicide while in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security. Beyond individual and communal sin is structural sin—when lovelessness is made into policy and enacted with cruelty. Note all the places where love failed.

In May, Marco Antonio Muñoz, a 39-year-old Honduran refugee, died in a south Texas jail cell of apparent suicide a few days after being forcibly separated from his wife and 3-year-old son at the U.S. border. And I mean “forcibly.”

When Border Patrol agents told Muñoz that the family would be separated, he “lost it,” according to The Washington Post. “‘The guy lost his s—,’ an agent said. ‘They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.’”

Muñoz was transferred to a county jail and placed in a padded isolation cell. Guards checked on him every 30 minutes. Reportedly, every time the guards passed during the night, they noted him praying in the corner of his cell. By morning, Marco Antonio Muñoz was dead.

The sheriff’s department video footage showed that “inmate Muñoz had taken off his sweater and used his sleeves to tie them around the steel grate on the floor used for the drain, making a loop.” He apparently died of strangulation, as is common in prison deaths—especially with short-term detainees who may not receive an adequate mental-health assessment during the intake process. The Border Patrol released Muñoz’s wife and son from custody after his death.

Less than a month later, Zeresenay Ermias Testfatsion, a 34-year-old Eritrean refugee, died during deportation from the U.S. According to the Post, he apparently hanged himself in a detention facility at the Cairo (Egypt) International Airport, where ICE agents had transferred him to Egyptian authorities en route to Eritrea. Testfatsion was seeking asylum in the U.S. and had spent 16 months in detention before deportation. His family was waiting for him at the airport in Eritrea. “I don’t know what’s going on or why he’s dying. Why? Why? What happened?” said Georgis Gebrendras, his cousin. “They needed somebody to [be] taking care of him,” she said.

“Tragically, many Eritrean refugees are torture survivors,” said John Stauffer, who works with Eritreans in the United States. “Eritreans who are denied asylum often fear a fate worse than death if forced to return to Eritrea. This man may have felt that.”

Who sinned? Catholic catechism teaches, “Everyone is responsible for [their] life before God who has given it to [them]. ... It is not ours to dispose of.” Yes, we must take individual responsibility, when we can.

However, Catholic teaching also says, “Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.” Who takes communal responsibility for the conditions in which these men died?

Who sinned, Jesus asked? Who took the life—the one who hanged himself or the ones who ripped his child out of his arms or may have returned him to torturers? Or those of us who paid for it?

For Christians, love is a universal obligation. We practice it toward all, believers and nonbelievers. Love as a social ethic puts into common practice what is right, just, and noble. It upholds freedom, dignity, and life as inalienable rights. Love is as love does.

“Cultures of domination rely on the cultivation of fear as a way to ensure obedience,” wrote cultural critic bell hooks in All About Love. A government policy that forcibly separates children from parents to instill fear and obedience is not only untenable, but profoundly anti-life. Therein lies the sin.