Christian views on suicide

Early Christians believed that suicide is sinful and an act of blasphemy. Modern Christians do not consider suicide an unforgivable sin (though still wrong and sinful) or something that prevents a believer who died by suicide from achieving eternal life.

The rate of suicide among Catholics is consistently lower than among Protestants, with Jewish suicide usually lower than both, except during times of persecution against Jews, for instance, during World War II. But religion is not the only factor in per capita suicide: among Catholics in Italy, the suicide rate is twice as high in Northern Italy than in the southern parts. Hungary and Austria have majority Catholic populations but they are number 2 and number 5 in the list of countries that have the highest suicide rate. And in Ireland, the Catholic and Protestant populations have the same low rate of suicide. French sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote that the higher rate of Protestant suicide is likely due to the greater degree of "the spirit of free inquiry" in the various Protestant groups, whereas the Catholic church supplies its worshippers with a relatively unchanging system of faith, delivered by a hierarchy of authority.