"A significant relapse"

In a tragic story, WFSA, in Montgomery, Alabama, reports a Catholic high school principal there as saying that the school's young chaplain "had dealt with neurological problems in the past. 'He was doing very well, but I guess he had a significant relapse.'" (UPDATE - The principal elaborates in the blog The Catholic Educator.)

Father Michael Labadie, 32, was found dead earlier this week: an apparent suicide.

Requiescat in pace.

Objectively, suicide is a great evil: an offense against God and against everyone in that person's life.

Psychological and other great disturbances may mitigate (if not eliminate) subjective culpability and so we prayerfully leave that person's fate in the hands of our loving God who is perfectly merciful and just.

However, as we put the dead prayerfully in God's hands and ask God to bring healing to the survivors, we should do all we can to keep others (or to keep ourselves) from heading down that darkest of roads, for the risks there are deadly and eternal.

Married or single, priest or layperson,
tough guy or sensitive soul--

this tragedy should remind us

of our urgent obligation

to care for others

and to let others care for us.