MANILA, Philippines - ?The gates of heaven may be closed to his soul, but won't you at least allow his body to get inside the church??

This unspoken thought raced through our minds as we witnessed the funeral procession stop short of the church entrance. Pallbearers instead set the casket down a few feet away from the door as mourners crossed themselves and kept their eyes down; the family wept.

?Suicide kasi,? some elderly ladies whispered, and everyone seemed to understand - no funeral rites for the deceased, no blessing from a priest, not even permission for the remains to cross over the threshold into ?hallowed ground.?

In some provinces, in fact, suicides as well as other so-called ?irredeemable? sins, among them masonry and polygamy, are bound to tarnish the family's good name even after death. Instead of being interred in the Catholic cemetery, the deceased is consigned to lie in a plot outside sacred ground for succeeding generations to witness and judge.

Fortunately for imperfect families, the Catholic Church seems to have since taken a different perspective - at least on suicide, if not quite yet on the issue of masonry or polygamy.

It's not that the rules have changed or that the Church ?has relaxed the rule,? the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) explains. It is simply that over the years there has been a greater understanding of suicide and thus a more enlightened approach, and not only from the Church.

Quoting the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Catechism for Filipino Catholics, the repository of official teachings of the Church in the Philippines, declares: ?Rather than an act of deliberate malice, suicide most often seems to be some sort of psychological ?short circuit? which involves running away from a life that has become ?impossible,? and from a God who seems completely absent. As in the case of abortion, much of the blame for this terrible loss falls on society in general, and especially those more directly involved with the distressed person.?

Msgr. Juanito Figura, secretary general of the CBCP, explains how the concept of malice shapes the Church's view of suicide. ?Technically, suicide is defined as the taking or ending of one's own life on one's own authority. So definitely suicide, in its simplest terms, is evil.?

However, he continues, the mere act of taking a life, ?by itself, may not constitute the totality of what we know as suicide.? The totality of suicide, he continues, involves three elements: intention, decision and action. ?We know that malice is present if there is evil present in all the three elements - if the intention is evil, the decision is evil, and the action is evil,? he says.

Given this presentation, it becomes difficult to declare that malice is present in a person ?brought to the extreme act of ending his life because of a psycho-emotional disturbance.? The act may be evil, but the intention and decision were not because obviously, there were other factors involved.

?In the past, whenever a death was declared to be a suicide, it was always presumed that there was malice. And, in the presence of malice, the person is deemed not worthy to receive absolution or blessing from a minister of the Church, and thus no funeral rites or blessings are given? he says.

With the Church now willing to consider that suicide may not necessarily be ?an act of deliberate malice,? it cannot and does not deny the rite of blessing in every case of suicide. The Church today looks at the totality of the case, and yes, on the person's entire life, in an attempt to determine whether or not there was deliberate malice in the act of suicide.

?Now the situation would be entirely different if the action (of ending one's life) was an expression of renouncement or rejection of God,? he adds. ?It is like saying: There is no hope in my life because there is no God. I do not believe in God, I do not believe it is He who has the power to give and take life. I am doing this because it is I who have power over my life.?

With this scenario, says the CBCP secretary general, ?there is definitely malice in intention, decision and action.? And if the Church denies its blessing on such a person who dies by his or her own hand, then it is not the Church that has alienated him, but the victim who first alienated himself from God and stepped outside the Church.