THE HOLY Synod this week reaffirmed its ban on burying suicide victims, in an effort to reinforce the drill to errant parish priests who turn a blind eye on the issue.
Bishop Pavlos of Kyrenia raised the matter with the Holy Synod, which duly proclaimed the ban at the end of its session on Thursday.
“The church condemns suicide and has banned church burials for those who take their lives. It is the ultimate sin which shows disrespect to the will of God,” a spokesman for the Synod said.
Orthodox theology draws no distinction between murder and suicide, which both end human life, a gift from God that can only be withdrawn by God.
For the Church, suicide signifies loss of patience and hope, running contrary to the very nature of faith, which means true believers can never lose hope, no matter what difficulties they face.
Orthodox Churches the world over ban burials for suicides, as do Catholic and Protestant church leaders.
The only exception is made for the mentally ill who have a medical certificate to prove it, the Synod pointed out.
Yet people were left wondering yesterday whether announcing the ban would have any effect on the age-old practice of parish priests turning a blind eye to the circumstances of death.
Psychologist Andreas Spanos, whose doctorate is on suicide, was one such sceptic.
Over six years of research, he said had never encountered a victim of suicide whose held a firm allegiance to Greek Orthodoxy, despite coming across cases where people had ended their life, despite a faith in “European religious culture”.
“I do believe that religion sometimes plays a part in suicide, but most people I speak to who are Orthodox are satisfied with the theology. The Church however, is a different thing,” he told the Cyprus Mail.
Although the Catholic and Protestant faith puts much more emphasis on the external world and the importance of living one’s life for others, Orthodoxy is a far more internal belief-structure that focuses on spirituality and being at one with an Omnipotent God, he said.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
