Ano ba talaga ang ibig sabihin ng Separation of Church and State?

I agree with Fr. Bernas. Everybody has a right to free expression, even the clergy. That doesn't mean I agree with them on everything though.

"Separation of Church and State" doesn't mean na hindi pwedeng mag-comment o magsalita ang mga Church people like bishops, priests and other individuals sa mga political issues ng ating bansa.

Para sa akin, ang ibig sabihin ng "Separation of Church and State" ay ang pagbabawal ng Theocracy sa ating bansa. Ang theocracy na tinutukoy ko ay yung katulad sa Iran, where the Crazy Mullahs run the show.

Diba, kuya Dean?

More: A scary must-read article on Iran's leader by Amir Taheri.

Last Monday, just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed "the nuclear club", President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à-tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who went into "grand occultation" in 941.

According to Shia lore, the Imam is a messianic figure who, although in hiding, remains the true Sovereign of the World. In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, (and, for obvious reasons, no women) naming them the owtad or "nails", whose presence, hammered into mankind's existence, prevents the universe from "falling off". Although the "nails" are not known to common mortals, it is, at times, possible to identify one thanks to his deeds. It is on that basis that some of Ahmad-inejad's more passionate admirers insist that he is a "nail", a claim he has not discouraged. For example, he has claimed that last September, as he addressed the United Nations' General Assembly in New York, the "Hidden Imam drenched the place in a sweet light".

Last year, it was after another khalvat that Ahmadinejad announced his intention to stand for president. Now, he boasts that the Imam gave him the presidency for a single task: provoking a "clash of civilisations" in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the "infidel" West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.

Ahmadinejad, you kill me man! Read the whole thing.

Anyway, didn't ARroyo also claim na she was God's chosen one too, and she was "doing God's will"?