Study: suicide rates higher in Protestant nations than Catholic ones

Catholic Culture ^ | March 14, 2012 | Diogenes

[Texas Fossil]

Agreed.

I have NO difficulty voting for Santorum or Newt. None.

I am not Catholic. But have Catholic relatives and friends. We get along fine.

I know there are “vast’ differences among Catholics. Some very very conservative. Others extremely liberal politically. There are some cultural differences in those 2 elements.

We have our work cut out for us before November. Lets get it done.

[saradippity]

I'd like to see more info on that but was advised that my computer was not compatible with theirs or some such thing. Can you get me more of the study.

Can't help but wonder about the size of the sample population since they are talking about suicides in the over 75'ers. Anyway whatever info on that study you can get for me,it would be appreciated.

[James C. Bennett]

The map charted countries with annual suicide rates. I leave it to the viewers to look up areas with majorities of the respective religions - Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Buddhist, etc., and compare that data with this map.

[RFEngineer]

“A study like that would be far more resource intensive than the one they did.”

Exactly the point. They are imputing conclusions not supported by the data - namely that religion is the reason for the disparity.

The use of the term “Protestant” - a term that includes many myriad denominations, most not in any way monolithic or hierarchical and comparing with “Catholic” which is - further dilutes any meaning on these statistics.

There may well be a religious component to prevalence of suicide - but we’ll never know unless somebody does the work. This study did not do that work.

Also, comparing secular Catholic/Protestant suicide rates would have been equally interesting - offering the chance to compare more directly the impact of religion on the lives of people against a specific social ill.

It would also stand to reason that measuring the quality of life in a country by a measuring how many people kill themselves is hardly a measure of anything relevant - ignoring many things like social policy, tax policy, level of democracy, and other factors that presumably would also impact the attitude of the population in terms of being able to control their destiny - and likelihood to turn to suicide.

Actual relevant statistical data required a lot of work, that was plainly not done here.

[Cronos]

Wódka Żubrówka :) sto lat! niech żjye nam!