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As a former 'cradle' Catholic, I'd like to expand on our answer. When you ask a Catholic if he is a Christian, most commonly you will hear a response, "I'm Catholic," as if that settles it. To a Catholic, being Catholic means being a member of what they think is the "one true church." If you ask the Catholic what a person must do to be justified before God, most often they will answer something like, "be good" or "live a good life". A Catholic will usually think that he is a "good person" and that his goodness is probably greater than his sinfulness. The Catholic believes that only his church can provide the proper Communion, in which the consecrated bread and wine cease to be bread and wine (except for their "accidents", which are the things one can detect _or measure or analyze_ with the senses: taste, smell, touch, appearance, chemical composition, molecular structure, etc.) and that they become "the whole Christ," including Jesus' physical body and blood, His soul, and His divinity. The Catholic places supreme importance on the consumption of God, of His actual flesh and blood, in their Eucharist meal. It is the highlight of their service (called a Mass). Because they believe that no other denomination's ministers have the authority from God to confect this Eucharist, the Catholic believes His Church to be superior to all others. The consumption of Jesus is emphasized so greatly in the Catholic Church, to the typical Catholic this "Sacrament" holds the place of importance in his life that a personal relationship with God through the indwelling Holy Spirit would hold in most other Christians' lives. The Catholic even worships and adores the Eucharistic elements as Almighty God. The Catholic has been taught erroneously that Jesus' discussion in John Ch. 6 was about Communion. They take Jesus' words literally when He said, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." Catholics do not realize that they are taking the words out of context and that Jesus was speaking metaphorically. Jesus was urging them all through the discussion to believe in Him as their Messiah (see verses 28-29, 35-40, and 47 for the main theme He kept repeating). The old Greek manuscripts have Jesus speaking in the "present active participle" word tense, which indicates that _present action_ was being urged. (This same tense is found in verse 35, too.) Since we can be sure that Jesus was not telling them to take a bite out of His bicep right then or to slit open His vein for a drink right then, we can be sure that Jesus did not mean they were to eat Him with the digestive tract, but they were supposed to "consume" Him _by faith and belief_ in Him. As St. Augustine once wrote, “Believe in Christ, and thou hast eaten Christ. For, believing in Christ is the eating of the bread of life.” The Catholic also places great stock in the authority of his priest to hear his auricular confession of sins and to pronounce God's absolution from those sins, pending the person's performance of assigned penance (which usually consists of certain prayers, such as for example _5 Our Fathers and 10 Hail Marys,_ or sometimes the performance of reparatory good deeds). When I attended Catholic catechism regularly as a child and youth, I was taught that if I ever left the Roman Catholic Church and failed to repent and return to "her" before my death, I would definitely go straight to hell. "Outside of the Catholic Church there is no salvation," the lesson book said. What does the Bible say about our salvation? Jesus promised: Joh 6:47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. Joh 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: Joh 3:15 That _whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life._ Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Joh 3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. Joh 3:18 _He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed_ in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Paul wrote in Romans 4 that we are justified in the eyes of God by His gift of grace through our faith, apart from works. Nowhere does the Bible say what the church of Rome says, that one must be Catholic, must receive Catholic Sacraments, must do good works, and must obey all the Commandments to be saved.

Suicide is not a selfish act. Some people that commit suicide are doing it because they believe they are relieving their friends and family of a huge burden.

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