^{HISTORY COME TO LIFE. A ‘blast from the past’ with Bishop John Carroll and Benjamin Franklin in a documentary re-enactment scene. Facebook.com/UrbanTrinityFilms}

 

A team of writers, historians and filmmakers have been busy creating Urban Trinity: The Story of Catholic Philadelphia (UrbanTrinityFilm.com). Sam Katz, the executive producer, native Philadelphian and owner of History Making Productions, and Kate Oxx, producer and senior historical adviser, spoke with the Register about the challenges and joys of producing this project, which will air at the film festival during the World Meeting of Families (at the Kimmel Center on Sept. 23 at 8pm; KimmelCenter.org/events/?id=5373), as well as on the local ABC affiliate.

 

What motivated you to create Urban Trinity?

Katz: The idea germinated as an outgrowth of Philadelphia: The Great Experiment (HistoryofPhilly.com), which is History Making Productions’ multipart, multiformat series on Philadelphia’s chronological history. William Penn founded a colony that was predicated on religious freedom and the opportunity for people to practice their faith in whatever way and whatever form they wanted. So I thought it would be interesting to take a different look at Philadelphia through the prism of religion ... And as I thought about it, I realized that I had grown up in a Catholic city. ... And I called Kate up about three years ago and broached the idea — and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

Kate, what was your first thought when Sam contacted you about doing this documentary?

Oxx: Yes! I just immediately thought it was such a fantastic idea! I should say I had been working with History Making Productions on Philadelphia: The Great Experiment, and the one thing that struck me immediately was that in his [Katz] having conversations with scholars and Philadelphians, he was very attentive to the religious history, and a lot of folks aren’t, unfortunately. One of the struggles in my field is that people often overlook religion as an integral part of why people do what they do — and why — on larger scales, from the local to the national to the global, religion impacts the world around us.

 

Although Philadelphia was built upon the ideal of William Penn’s “Great Experiment” of freedom of religion for all, were people in early Philadelphia afraid of Catholics?

Oxx: So much of what the early Philadelphia folks were doing was trying to create this new place and to define what it would mean as an American democratic place. The notion that Catholic individuals would always be answering to a foreign leader [the Pope] was very much central to the reason for both that suspicion and the violence and the attack on the early churches. Even before the sort of violence that became full scale in the 19th century, there were outbreaks in the 18th century, primarily at what’s now called Old St. Joseph’s, the first Catholic parish founded here. So, yes, although this place was founded to be a “holy experiment,” where folks of all faiths would be granted religious tolerance, the way that it worked on the ground was often quite different than that.

 

What are some of the challenges in the creation of Urban Trinity?

Katz: The first and most significant challenge is that most of the story takes place before there was film, so how do you convey visually and in a dramatic way stories that happened in the 18th and 19th centuries, absent archival footage? So part of the biggest challenge was to create re-enactment scenes that would convey what it felt like to be a person coming to Philadelphia, say, from San Domingue, fleeing the slave rebellion of 1793 and finding refuge in the Church; or fleeing the [Irish] famine from 1847-1853 and arriving in a place that hated you because you were Irish-Catholic. So that was one of the biggest challenges and, I think, one of our biggest successes. Another huge challenge was recruiting the scholars who work in both Philadelphia Catholic history and American Catholic history, and Kate took that responsibility.

 

And how was that experience?

Oxx: It was tremendous! The community of scholars that we have here in Philadelphia, who study Philadelphia and Philadelphia Catholic history, they’ve just been such a fantastic resource: from archivists and public historians to scholars and academics, just sharing what they know and their time and resources to help us re-create these moments in ordinary peoples’ lives, as well as in the lives of some of the more famous. We have two Catholic saints here in Philadelphia; and between St. John Neumann and St. Katharine Drexel, those are easier stories to tell, because they’re better known. Other stories of the, sort of, people in the pews, as we sometimes say about everyday Catholics, help us bring their stories to life; and for scholars to be so generous with us [is meaningful]. And then we’ve also had some amazing national scholars who have come in — people like Jay Dolan and Robert Orsi, who have come from Florida and Chicago respectively, to share their lifetime of scholarship with us. So that part has been absolutely incredible.

 

Do you have a favorite story that you are covering in the film?

Katz: I love the story of Dennis Cardinal Dougherty and his decision to shut down the theater and film business in Philadelphia in the 1930s because movies had become ... salacious. The [National] Conference of Bishops had established a Legion of Decency. But no bishop was more aggressive than Cardinal Dougherty in his pursuit of limiting the flock’s exposure to Hollywood and to the divorce and sexual conduct that was being displayed on the screen and, of course, the dress which exposed shoulders and plunging necklines. But I think the most interesting story within that story is that, after a few months of the theater business basically being shut down — and many theaters had to close because so many Catholics would not go to the theater — a father who wanted to take his daughter to see Treasure Island wrote a letter to the second or third in command at the archdiocese [stating]: “Wasn’t it enough; wasn’t it time to end the boycott?” — because he wanted to take his daughter. And the father turns out to be Jack Kelly; and the daughter turns out to be Grace Kelly!

I think Philadelphians are going to enjoy hearing stories like that, and also, I think, maybe smiling at the power that could be wielded by the archbishop of Philadelphia in the 1930s.

Diana von Glahn is

producer and host of

EWTN’s The Faithful Traveler

(TheFaithfulTraveler.com).

She writes from Philadelphia, where she will help

the Register cover World Meeting of Families.