Over the weekend, a clip from a homily at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Tuam, Co Galway, went somewhat viral.
Priest Fr Mark Quinn was giving the homily at Sunday’s 12:30pm Mass, with the homily then posted with the priest’s permission, on X by Catholic businessman, Declan Ganley. The short and thoughtful homily is worth listening to in full here:
“As we enter into November, the Church’s month of the faithfully departed and of the holy souls, it’s a time when we’re called to pray for our dead, priests too,” Fr Quinn, 44, said.
“We look back over the list of funerals over the past 12 months and recall those that we laid to rest, and those families who we minister to. Of course, all death and loss is difficult, but some are more tragic than others,” he continued before recounting “the most difficult” week of his ministry so far, which unfolded just a few months ago.
“In the space of just one week – seven days – I attended the funerals and burials of three middle-aged men. Each of these men had died by suicide.”
The Mayo native said that many of the people he had spoken to that week had questioned “the complete senselessness” of it – “the devastation of it all.”
“What’s going on?” the people asked, “What is the cause of this, and what can be done?”
“And like everything, time goes on and moves on. Although the questions we pose rarely seem to be addressed; this is until tragedy strikes again, as we’re well aware, it happened this week and is inevitable.
“And as a community and a nation, we can do one of two things. We can choose to move on again and try to forget about it, bury our heads in the sand, so to speak, or we can try to address this as best as we can, however insignificant that might seem. And as a pastor of souls, I can only choose the second option.
“Around 450 to 500 people die in this country each year by suicide with 80 per cent of them being men who are young or to middle-aged. And as I said, one of those questions that’s often asked is what is this for? What is the reason behind this? And of course, there’s no easy answer to this, but there are certain factors that certainly don’t help in any way that we must be aware of and we must address them. And if we’re to address this issue then each of us has to take some responsibility for changing this trend of this terrible epidemic,” Fr Quinn told parishioners.
In his homily, the priest made an earnest appeal to Irish media to cease its “relentless attack” on faith, and what he described as the “constant demonisation” of the church. That part is worth paying attention to:
“So firstly I want to appeal to the media and the entertainment industry in this country,” the Tuam priest said. Please, please stop your relentless attack on the faith in this country. The constant demonization of the church and the people of faith has resulted in thousands, if not millions, walking away from the one thing that can offer people refuge and hope. And that is the person of Jesus Christ and his church, the church that he founded. And when people are lost or have no guidance and no understanding of the real purpose and meaning in life, they will go to very, very dark places.”
“There’s also so many people out there who have no idea how loved and cherished they are by God because we have a culture that has told them there is no place for them to go; that religion and faith are a thing of antiquity.”
Secondly, he appealed to the government.
“You often speak about the importance of mental health and well-being and looking after oneself,” he said in an address to those at the helms of power. “And yet the policies that have been introduced into this country the last few years as well as those policies which are pushing to introduce tell us clearly that not all life is valued the same – that not all life is equal. That life can be simply ended if we wish to do so. What kind of a message does this send to people who are questioning their own very existence?”
Touchingly, Fr Quinn said that in his short time as a priest, he had witnessed “more miracles in confession that I could ever have hoped to imagine,” lamenting how, in his words, in the past three to four decades, the sacrament had been “neglected, if not outright ignored.”
Confession, he said, can save not only souls, not lives, too.
“In the confessional, the life-changing power of Jesus is at work. There’s so many people who go through their entire lives and have never encountered God’s reality of the love he has for them through the mercy of this sacrament. In confession, I’ve seen at firsthand people who have been discouraged, been lifted up. People who are wounded, who have been healed, people who are lost, who have been found, and people who are broken, have been given new life. Jesus gave us this sacrament, not as a sacrament to judge, but as a sacrament to set us free.”
‘IT GIVES THE IMPRESSION THAT A PERMANENT OPTION IS A NOBLE WAY OUT’
The part of his homily that has captured the most attention online directly relates to the language used around suicide.
“I appeal to this community and to the wider community, please be careful how you use your words. Posting messages of condolences, whether it be online or to someone in person, is of course a good thing, but saying things like, “He’s in a better place now,” or, “She’s at peace with the angels now,” it just doesn’t send the right message to people who might be struggling.
“I know you may mean very well, but it gives the impression that this permanent option is a noble way out with some kind of a happy ending. And this is what it is: A permanent solution to a temporary problem, a permanent wound on those left behind. Heartbroken families who will never recover from something that could have been avoided.”
Finally, the priest appealed to those who are struggling, and might “see this as their only option.”
“I don’t pretend to stand up here and have all the answers to life’s questions. But I do know that countless people have travelled through this dark tunnel that you’re in and have come out the other side. The darkness doesn’t last forever. Even when you cannot see the light, Jesus is there standing beside you. He is the light that the darkness cannot overcome. So please hold on, speak to someone, reach out, pray. Even if it’s only a small prayer, come to me. I’ll pray with you and I’ll tell you some of my own story.
“But remember this, you cannot go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and you can change the ending.”
I thought it was a beautiful homily, and I’ve included it here in full, because judging by the reaction online, very many people needed to hear it. It has since been posted to YouTube. It’s received almost 200,000 impressions on X since Sunday.
“How I wish anyone considering suicide could hear this comforting homily,” one person wrote. Those from the UK and Australia left comments, with the Tuam priest praised for showing bravery and honesty regarding an immensely difficult topic.
On Newstalk’s Lunchtime Live show on Tuesday, one caller to the programme, who had himself sadly been bereaved by suicide, said he felt the priest’s words would “do nothing to address the stigma around suicide in society.” Others agreed.
“I think that by saying something is not noble,” the caller said, “You are inadvertently, indirectly saying that you are judging it. And that has been a problem in our society for decades.” Another caller to the programme said the priest was “right, and he’s wrong.” Another man described as a mental health advocate said that, having contemplated suicide himself, “I’m not going to look to a church” and that faith would be “one of the very last things you’d think about.”
“As terrible as it is to say, you don’t even think about the consequences of the act,” he said, suggesting that in some cases, suicide was simply inevitable. Counselling Psychologist and Lecturer in TU Dublin, Leslie Shoemaker, said that there was a danger of veering towards “a guilt trip” on the topic of suicide.
All those points are valid. And there are huge problems in this country with issues people face accessing mental health supports, including in jammed A&E departments, facing prolonged delays, and simply not being able to get into services. But in my view, Fr Quinn makes a profoundly important point which relates to the dangers of normalising suicide. It makes sense that someone who is struggling, when hearing that someone with similar struggles, “is now at peace” may prompt them down such a tragic path.
It is no secret that records of suicide contagion date as far back as the 1700s. Peer-reviewed research has shown that suicide, in particular, teen suicide and celebrity suicide, can be contagious.
We can seem in danger of glamorising suicide. Note the popularity of the disturbing teen-targeted 2017 film, ’13 Reasons Why’, as one prime example. Then there is the way in which many in the Catholic church, these days, tend to instantly canonise our dead (rather than encouraging people to pray for them). People fixate on the idea of massive funerals and rolling tributes, which, at the end of the day, can be incredibly dangerous.
That doesn’t help, and I think that’s what the priest was getting at. It seems harsh to say it – but our society is now so invested in the popular business of stigma-busting that any form of shame or stigma, relating to anything at all, is bad.
But stigma used to be society’s way of regulating certain behaviour. In the case of suicide, the strong societal disapproval that was there in the past, I would argue, was not altogether a bad thing. We’ve come a long way from that, but have also gone so far backwards when you look at the depressing all-out advocacy for assisted suicide and euthanasia from huge strands of our political and media class.
There’s a sad irony in the promotion of great initiatives like Darkness into Light, and the simultaneous banging of the drum for the great euphemism of “assisted dying”. Our media constantly spotlights people with neurological and physical conditions in the context of such discussions who say they wish to die, rarely giving a thought to how this inevitably makes others with a similar prognosis feel useless and disposable.
The truth is that we can defend certain stigmas. There is, and there should be, for example, a social stigma around drink driving, or smacking your children. There remains a stigma around adultery for extremely good reason. Why should the tragedy of suicide be any different?
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can call Samaritans free on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.ie; or call Pieta on freephone 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444.