An American Catholic in Panama

The first Sunday after we moved to Panama, I drove my family to the only English-language Catholic parish in the capital, located in the former Panama Canal Zone. The zone, readers will recall, was governed as a concession of the United States for approximately 75 years. This Sunday was during the rainy season, and the showers did not disappoint, flooding roads both unfamiliar and treacherous given the proliferation of potholes.

The parish, run by a couple of American Vincentian priests, was relatively small; there were only 50 or 60 people in attendance, even though a handful of children were receiving their First Communion. Our family of seven was rather conspicuous, increasing the size of the congregation by ten percent, and we were warmly greeted by several volunteers and families.

The liturgy, I’d wager, was not much different from that in many Catholic parishes in the United States; its music and informality reminded me of the Methodist or Episcopalian services I attended in the two decades I was a Protestant. It certainly was a departure from our “trad-lite” Catholic parish in Virginia. The priest requested we stand so everyone could applaud us, the new visitors. Before the benediction, he asked those with upcoming travel plans to proceed to the front to receive a blessing, not only from the priest but from all parishioners present, who solemnly raised their hands.

Before moving here, I didn’t have a clear idea of what Catholicism in Panama might look like. I knew there was at least one English-language parish in the country, and, given the large number of American expatriates, I presumed there would be others (there is, to my knowledge, now a grand total of two). Even if there weren’t, I wagered, there were probably a variety of Spanish-language options that existed on a liturgical spectrum, similar to any major American metropolitan area. Panama is, after all, a majority Catholic nation, and, from what I had observed during a brief trip to the country before we relocated, is a far more outwardly religious society than the United States.

An American friend of mine who speaks fluent Spanish suggested that the next Sunday we come with him to a parish pastored by a Panamanian priest he knew. Despite the larger size of the building — the theater-like seating bespeaks a post-Vatican II architectural design — there were fewer than a hundred people in attendance. Once again, our big gringo family stuck out like a sore thumb, and before the benediction the pastor made a point of formally welcoming us, again eliciting applause from the gathered parishioners.

The following Sunday we tried a different Spanish-language parish, a Claretian church built in the late 1940s in the Obarrio neighborhood of Panama City, close to downtown. Its traditional architectural structure features beautiful stained-glass windows, many honoring St. Anthony Claret, as well as an impressive, white marble high altar with wine-colored inlay. This parish, unlike the others, was packed almost to the brim with hundreds of parishioners.

After Mass, which featured some of the same “contemporary worship” style of music standard at many American parishes, we introduced ourselves to an affable, relatively young priest who spoke broken English. The Sunday after that, the same priest took it upon himself to introduce us prior to the benediction, provoking yet another round of applause (sigh).

In addition to its architecture, the church has another strength: the large number of priests allows for confession to be offered directly before and during Mass, and the confession lines are always long. If you ask my kids, they’ll tell you the best part of the parish grounds are the several breeds of parrots kept in cages in the outdoor courtyard — the property, I’m told, of a priest who left to do mission work years ago and has yet to return.

The Claretian parish must possess some pedigree in Panamanian society. There is a large crypt attached to the church, in which lie the remains of many members of the elite class, often called rabiblancos because of their European lineage. By my count, at least one former president is buried there, as well as members of several other presidential families. When my younger boys start acting up during Mass, I take them down to the crypt to pray (or scream and run around, as the case may be).

For months, this was the church we dutifully attended, including for Christmas and Easter (arriving 45 minutes early for both holidays barely secured us seats). We made the acquaintance of a few parishioners, including a female lector who became our older children’s Spanish tutor.

Then, this past spring, my American friend told me he had by chance observed a sign on the door of Iglesia San José, one of the colonial-era churches in Casco Antiguo, the city’s “Old Town,” advertising a weekly English Mass. Upon their first visit, he and his wife found the Mass so underattended that they were asked to do the readings! The priest, they discovered, was an American who had pastored a large parish in Arizona before retiring to Panama, where he had received permission from the local bishop to say Masses in English and French.

We were thrilled, and, with the addition of another recently arrived large American family, we more than doubled the attendance at weekly Mass. There was also the added appeal of worshiping at “Captain Morgan’s Altar.” As the (apocryphal) folktale goes, when the British pirate Henry Morgan stormed and ransacked Panama City in 1670, a Spanish cleric dissuaded the buccaneer from pillaging his church by painting the golden altar black. (The altarpiece’s style is 18th-century late Baroque, and local records show it was not covered in gold until 1915, so obviously, it’s not the original.) More substantively, with the priest’s permission we were able to make Sunday-morning Mass more like the traditional type we missed from back home; the other family’s older sons assumed the role of altar boys, and the priest added Latin to the liturgy.

It turned out to be too good to be true. After only a few months, the priest was compelled to return to the States to care for an ailing family member, and the bishop decided that English Masses would now be said at noon by the same Vincentian priests who ran the English-language parish, far too late for large families juggling nap times.

The population of Panama is more than 80 percent Catholic. Yet the country possesses the “cultural Catholicism” characteristic of much of Latin America, where, despite many Catholic public holidays and ubiquitous churches, actual piety is barely perceptible. Nevertheless, there are some commendable things about Latin American Catholicism. When we first arrived, I was consistently confused and annoyed that there seems to be no semblance of order to Communion lines. Even before the priest descends the altar, parishioners in virtually every pew rush forward, vying to be the first in line. I’ve been told by other Latin Americans that this is not done out of rudeness (though it’s possible it could be, as there is plenty of that in Panamanian culture) but on the presumption that many people, even in the front pews, will not receive Communion. Indeed, unlike in the United States, where the number of Catholics who receive is so great as to engender embarrassment among those few who refrain, a significant percentage of any given group of Latino Massgoers will not receive. The general sentiment, I learned, is that if you haven’t gone to confession recently — even if you haven’t committed a mortal sin — you shouldn’t receive Communion.

Curious to understand Panamanian Catholicism better, I asked a local friend, a serious Catholic pursuing a degree in ecclesiastical Latin, to dinner. He chose a restaurant in Casco Antiguo situated in a delightful, historic hotel with a “Spanish wing” that was once a Jesuit convent, the traces of which are still visible not only in the stonework but in the large, raised wooden pulpit that now serves as decoration. Adjacent to the hotel are the ruins of a Jesuit church that dates to the 17th century.

The traditionalist impulses that built such stunning sacred spaces are largely gone from Panamanian Catholicism, my friend explained. There is little diversity between parishes, meaning you will find no “rad trad,” “trad,” or even “trad-lite” places to worship. You will find no Latin in the liturgy, no ad orientem, and no traditional hymns to accompany what is often magnificent pre-Vatican II ecclesial architecture (the Vincentian church excepted). All that is on offer is an uninspiring modern liturgical style, the banality of which explains, at least in part, why the Protestants are making such impressive inroads here, as they are across Latin America. At least the Prots seem to have passion.

That said, my friend emphasized, Panamanian Catholics do, for the most part, have an earnest belief in God. Though the label “cultural Catholicism” is not necessarily inaccurate, a Pew Research Center study from ten years ago found that almost half of all Panamanian Catholics attend Mass weekly, which is a lot better than self-identifying American Catholics, of whom only about 20 percent attend weekly Mass. In this regard, Panamanian attendance is actually low compared to other Central American countries: about three-quarters of Guatemalans attend weekly Mass, for example, and almost two-thirds of Hondurans do the same.

There are, my friend explained, stronger familial and cultural pressures in Panama than in the United States to attend Mass, if not weekly, at least regularly. As an extension of this, there are more outward expressions of faith here. Bible verses and religious language are prominently displayed on many vehicles, Rosaries hang from rearview mirrors, and many public events, including my son’s youth baseball games, begin with prayer. Even some government functions have an explicitly Catholic character, including, for example, Masses celebrated at military ceremonies. That’s because the Panamanian state is explicitly Catholic. Article 35 of the Constitution decrees: “All religions may be professed and all forms of worship practiced freely, without any other limitation than respect for Christian morality and public order. It is recognized that the Catholic religion is practiced by the majority of Panamanians.” Article 107, in turn, reads: “The Catholic religion shall be taught in public schools, but, upon the requests of parents or guardians, certain students shall not be obliged to attend religion classes, nor to participate in religious services.”

Despite the unashamedly Catholic overtones to Panamanian life, the piety that attends it is not necessarily well catechized and blends Catholic faith and practice with various elements of New Age mysticism, superstition, and even occultism. Presumably, part of the reason is that “cultural Catholicism” fosters a certain complacency. Catholic faith is a given in Latin American life, like Carnival, quinceañeras, and government corruption. But it’s also difficult to catechize. Unlike in the United States, there are few Catholic publishing houses, and books are less common and more expensive to acquire. There doesn’t seem to be much Catholic content on “new media” similar to the explosion of ministries and apologetics in America (my friend hopes to start a Spanish-language website featuring intellectual Catholic content). In contrast, evangelical converts in Latin America are an impassioned, often U.S.-funded minority, and they are better catechized and more familiar with their Bibles than native Catholics.

For my family, the Opus Dei Center in Panama City has been a godsend. The three priests from the center regularly host retreats and other religious events in the city and throughout this country of 4.5 million people. They also, to our good fortune, speak English, and they have made themselves generously available to us for confessions. Regular visits to the center have served as quiet “mini-retreats” for our family, where we can confess in English and pray in their humble but charming little chapel with its elaborately carved wooden pillars about the altar.

A year and a half into our Panamanian sojourn, my family is once again attending Mass at the Claretian parish, where the homilies are delivered in a version of Spanish the speed and accent of which I find largely incomprehensible. Still, the sacraments are readily available, and, apart from a few periodic hiccups, the liturgy seems intentionally faithful to canon law.

The lesson, at least for me, is not to take the blessings of Catholic subcultures in the United States for granted. I know many Americans reside in parishes (or dioceses) where the liturgical norms and practices — confession times limited to 30 minutes on Saturday afternoons, saccharine 1970s Protestant hymns, formalized greetings of fellow attendees at the beginning of Mass — in their irreverence slowly squeeze the spiritual life out of the faithful. But even there, you typically share a culture and language that presents opportunities for prudential reform. The barriers to entry for foreigners in a host country even to suggest such changes are far higher — regardless of locale. Who are we, ungrateful, entitled gringos, to tell Panamanians (or longtime resident American expats) how to “do” Catholicism?

So, my wife and I have determined, we’ll make do with the Catholic Church as instantiated here in little Panama, the isthmus uniting North and South America, with its canal that connects the world. Though it is not a Catholicism in piety or practice that is familiar or to our liking, we’ll take comfort in what unites us: the sacraments, prayer, and an authentic love for Christ. And if we’re thinking about the salvation of our souls and those of our neighbors, the history of the Church reminds us that Christ has accomplished His work with far less.

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