Canon Michael Wedgeworth writes about the suicides in Bridgend.

Catching up with the Dean's Blog after a few days away (Yes, I know, I could have read it from abroad, but I had no access to a computer), I see that a teenager, Sophie Brooks, holds the record so far for the number of comments on one of these Lent pieces.

Congratulations Sophie. Your straight talking obviously struck a chord with readers.

I find myself wondering what you think about the dreadful spate of suicides among the teenagers of Bridgend in Wales, where the seventeenth such death was reported in the Lancashire Telegraph only yesterday.

It looks as though the authorities, after denying for days that there is any link between them, are now wondering whether this very medium, the internet, has something to do with it.

I find it almost impossible to understand how, with everything to live for, these young people need to end it all in this way.

Is it depression, is it drugs, is it a cry for help?

Is it the media or websites somehow glamourising ways of ending life?

I just don't get it.

There was a time when the Church regarded suicide as a sin, and refused to bury victims in consecrated ground.

Now, there is much greater sensitivity to the mental, psychological and social context in which a person attempts suicide.

And it is an organization named after a character from a story in the Gospels, created by a man who was a vicar in Blackburn - the Samaritans - which does more than most to help people with suicidal tendencies.

However the Bridgend phenomenon is eventually explained, and however heartfelt the sympathy to those who have died, I can't help wondering whether there might be at least a degree of selfishness in what they have done.

All these youngsters were born to a mother who will have nurtured and cared for them.

Their parents and grandparents will no doubt have worried about them growing up in a sometimes difficult world.

There will have been a sharing of love and hope between them, and promise for the future.

But now it is all at an end. Families and friends are devastated, dreading what will come next.

Did those who have died, however depressed or unhappy they might have been, think of any of this, of their obligation to those who had loved them.

I honestly don't know the answer to my question. Perhaps teenagers reading this will have a better understanding than I.

Of course, during this season of Lent we are preparing to recall the death of another young man.

But this death was anything but selfish. This life was laid down for his friends.