Suicide from the joint perspective of canon law and Polish law

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to show how the ecclesiastical and secular societies protect human life against a specific danger posed by one’s own hand. The authors, basing on the formal-dogmatic approach, researching literature and analysing appropriate norms of canon and Polish law, demonstrate that both canon and Polish criminal law provisions on suicide protect human life only circumstantially. In the first part, we present the issue of suicide from the point of view of moral teachings of the Catholic Church, which are a fundamen- tal law-making factor for the ecclesiastical community. Reception of the ethical doctrine by canon law was reflected in two Codes of Canon Law, those of 1917 and 1983. In these codi- fications, we traced gradual reduction of prohibitions or sanctions for suicides (especially regarding right to Christian burial), which however does not refer to all self-killers, because of the need for protecting other spiritual goods (suicide attempt as irregularity in the case of receiving or exercising holy orders). In the second part, we presented the problem of suicide in the context of Polish law, with special emphasis on the significance of human life as a le- gal interest subject to strong protection and as a conflict between life and dignity. We also analysed the question of the unlawfulness of suicide attempts. In the end, we point to legal measures intended to prevent this phenomenon, which is unfavourable to the society.

Keywords

• suicide
• moral teaching of the Church
• canon law
• criminal law
• right to life and human dignity