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The photo above is of one of the images of the Virgin Mary that Catholics parade through the streets of San Carlos on Easter Sunday. Earlier that day I was at a multi-denominational, mostly Protestant Easter sunrise service on the grounds of the Afro-Antillean Museum in Panama City, and earlier in the week I was at a memorial service for my late brother-in-law at the Balboa Union Church. (And also during the week I took a glimpse at a far-right website that purports to serve the "expat community" where it tried to call me an atheist, but couldn't spell the word right. Nice try, Clyde.)

During the 19th century Colombia was wracked by wars that were partly religious in nature. In the struggle for independence from Spain, the Catholic Church got a percentage of the wealth that the crown could squeeze out of Latin America and was thus a bulwark of opposition to independence. Simon Bolivar and most of other major independence leaders were freemasons, and although there are a fair number of Catholic Masons here, ever since they burned Jacques De Molay at the stake the Vatican has taken the position that freemasonry is heresy. (Which is one reason why my brother-in-law, nominally Catholic but a prominent Mason, was memorialized in the Union Church.) Later, as Colombians went to war between Conservatives who wanted to make Catholicism the official religion of the nation and Liberals who were opposed to having a state-sponsored religion, Panama was except for a few pockets a bastion of liberalism.

This is a Catholic country, with more than 80 percent of the population adhering to that denomination of the Christian faith, but we have had two Jewish presidents and also some nominally Catholic freemasons in the presidential palace. How can that be?

You see, religion is relevant in Panama. Morality matters. Public displays of piety by politicians, however, are seen as boorish posturing and attempts to play upon religious divisions for political gain are against a number of our laws. Under the new immigration decree, foreigners can be thrown out of the country for inciting religious hatred. On the other hand, they teach catechism in the public schools and display religious symbols in the parks and on other public properties.

Panama once had the Holy Inquisition and we have more or less come to an understanding that allows us to be both a Catholic country and an open society where there is freedom of religion. There isn't exactly an impervious wall between church and state that's the ideal of many in the United States and more or less favored by US law, but neither do we have major party candidates taking theocratic stands or railing against evolution like there have been up there.

But still, religion is relevant and morality matters.

This is certainly the case with respect to human rights issues. The US State Department has published this remarkable piece of fiction that condones and denies last year's several murders by Panamanian cops even if our prosecutors don't, but meanwhile a coalition of civic and human rights groups issued its own "shadow report" and first among equals in that alliance is the Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission.

I went to Sunday School at the Margarita Union Church and a lot of the teaching took and some didn't. I believe in God and the prophets and Jesus and the Judgment Day, but I'm not a member of any congregation and my views are somewhere in the middle of a triangle whose points are fundamentalist Unitarian, backslid Muslim and Gandhi's heterodoxy about Ahimsa. I didn't feel uncomfortable in the Balboa Union Church, it wouldn't bother me if Panama had another Jewish president, and even if all the lies that the Karl Rove wannabes are speading about Barack Obama being a Muslim rather than a Protestant were true, that wouldn't bother me either. The only thing is, I want a man or a woman whose ethics are sincere and not for show, and I don't want any leaders who confuse themselves with God.