DAGUPAN CITY–Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said that Church law categorically forbids clerics from assuming any public office whenever this means having a share in the exercise of civil power.

Cruz issued this statement after no less than Batanes Bishop Camilo Gregorio, appointed by President Arroyo to be member of the special investigative body she formed called Melo Commission to probe spate of killings of left-wing activists and journalists, requested that he be replaced Tuesday.

The commission headed by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo will also have as its members National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Nestor Mantaring, Chief State Prosecutor Jovencio Zuno, Catholic Bishop Camilo Gregorio, Senior Counsel Vinluan, and Atty. Nelia Gonzales, representing the legal and academic community.

Gergorio earlier expressed willingness to be part of the commission created by the President last Monday.

Cruz, former president of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, said that this universal church law prohibition applies to all deacons, priests and bishops of the Catholic Church in the four corners of the globe.

"The law is quite strict and rigid such that any cleric who entertains a definite and defined contrary option, should terminally leave the clerical state", he said.

He said that the so called “Melo Commission” is definitely neither a purely private nor civil body.

"As designed and constituted by no less than the highest executive office holder in the land, it is incongruous to even think that it has nothing to do with the exercise of civil power in its executive expression in other words, all clerics in the country are forbidden by church law from membership in the said commission as such," he said.

”Hopefully, this canonical prohibition would assuage the apparent paranoidal preoccupation of the present administration that clerics in the country like to take over its tenure of power, intent to assume its public office and pursuant prerogatives”, Cruz said.

"Would that the said church law put to rest the seemingly progressive self-agitation of Malacañang that the local Pilipino church hierarchy is interested in changing its occupant due to its design and desire to have a presence therein," he added.

He noted that it is not only the fundamental law of the land that indirectly provides the separation of the church and state. The universal law of the church also affirms its separation from the state is inherently for church ministry-definitely not for government service, he added.

It is strange that the present administration fervently invokes the principle of the separation of church and state whenever clerics denounce the unethical contents of its political options and actions, Cruz said.

"Yet the same is rather fast in enlisting no less than bishops for membership in the said commission that is envisioned precisely to investigate and resolve political killings in the country," he added.

Cruz said, "What a self-contradiction!”