What separation?

Mitsubishop. Nissan Sapari. Those are just some of the smirk-filled comments  circulating in the Net after exposure of  a letter from  Butuan Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos asking then-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to give him a Mitsubishi Pajero as a “birthday gift” back in 2009.

To be fair, the bishop justified his request by saying that he and other clergy  members go to  remote communities with only a seven-year-old vehicle at his disposal.

And the bishop wasn’t ignorant of patronage politics when he acknowledged that there were a lot of politicians and rich people lining up who could have given him the Pajero on his birthday or any other occasion.

The problem was that he wasn’t alone in making such requests.

The letter stood out owing to the Butuan bishop’s continued calls for President Aquino to resign and his being a staunch supporter of the former president.

The bishop’s letter was one of many uncovered in an investigation of the use of Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) funds by the former administration to win favors from public officials and now, religious leaders.

Again to be fair, not every bishop asked favors from the president. Former Cebu Arcbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal was historically a political moderate whose defense of president Joseph Estrada was in stark contrast to the prevailing Church sentiment that he must resign the presidency ahead of an aborted Senate impeachment trial.

While not directly affecting Cebu’s Catholic leaders—though Vidal was reportedly tasked to head the internal investigation into the case—the bribery scandal  involving the former administration and top church officials in other parts of the country aggravates the rift caused by the Aquino administration’s support for the Reproductive Health bill.

Some quarters see  the PCSO exposé as a convenient way for the Aquino government to get back at clergy leaders  for their overreaching attacks against the administration’s RH bill advocacy.

An investigation should be pushed if only to prove that bishops aren’t sacred cows  exempted from the rule of law.

But neither should the issue be used to cloud the RH bill debate.

The incident proves that for all the talk about the constitutional separation of Church and State, not a few people from both sides of the fence are willing to cross the line, if only to realize their own agenda.