David-Raeford Davis, who portrays Bishop Patrick Lynch, re-enacts a celebration of Mass with Confederate soldiers during the filming of Fire Tried Gold. SPECIAL

Church and state

Film tells story of Catholicism in S.C

Web posted August 12, 2000

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By Virginia Norton
Staff Writer

The Rev. John Geaney, a priest and filmmaker from Baltimore, headed for west Africa on Tuesday with a flock of seminarians, whom he'll expose to a developing country.

``I will do some filming,'' said the Rev. Geaney, a Paulist priest whose duties for Catholic Relief Services included making three 60-minute documentaries in the past four years. His latest, Fire Tried Gold, a history of Catholicism in South Carolina, will be broadcast across the state and in several other markets this weekend. The docudrama will be carried on WAGT-TV (Channel 26) at 1 p.m. Sunday.

The film was funded by a gift from Larry and Beth Burtschy and family of Charleston, S.C., in honor of Bishop David B. Thompson's ministry. He served from 1990 to 1999, when Bishop Robert Baker was named as the 12th bishop of Charleston.

The filmmaker based the title on I Peter 1:6-8 to describe the deep faith of the Catholic people in South Carolina, according to Deirdre Mays, director of communications for the Diocese of Charleston.

South Carolina Catholics numbered about 126,800 at the end of 1999. For every hundred people in the state, approximately three are Catholic, the film says. ``You are looking at a vast area that is not populated by Catholics,'' the Rev. Geaney said.

Fire Tried Gold begins its story with the area's first bishop, John England, who ably charmed, debated and educated a largely Protestant audience about Catholicism in the early 1800s.

Born in Ireland, he embraced the principles of the U.S. Constitution and preached that charity demanded religious tolerance. Protestant congregations invited him to speak from their pulpits. Bishop England also addressed Congress.

The Rev. John Geaney, producer (from left), actor Stephen Ryan (as Bishop John England) and producer/director Gonzalo Accame prepare to film a scene for Fire Tried Gold. SPECIAL

He knew the power of the printed word and started the first Catholic weekly, The U.S. Catholic Miscellany, in 1822, introducing a Catholic perspective into the issues of the day.

To teach members of his diocese, who were scattered across Georgia and the Carolinas, he published a catechism and a missal in English. He also invited women to form a religious congregation, the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy, to care for orphans and teach and assist the poor - black and white.

The order continues to work in hospitals and schools throughout South Carolina. St. Mary Help of Christians School in Aiken was staffed by its sisters from 1970 to 1997 and St. Angela Academy in Aiken from 1906 to 1988, when it closed.

When Bishop England died in April 1842, the city of Charleston came to a standstill. Flags hung at half-staff to honor the beloved bishop.

Patrick Lynch, another Irishman who became bishop, was raised in Charleston, the son of a slave owner. As bishop, he owned 100 slaves himself. Although he believed it was wrong to trade, abuse or neglect slaves, he defended slavery as a part of the culture and economy. When South Carolina broke with the Union, he pledged his allegiance to his state and then to the Confederacy.

The Confederacy sent him to the Vatican as its representative, but the Vatican did not recognize him. Instead, it gave him a new set of vestments and told him to go home.

After the South lost the war, he was barred from entering the United States. It took months to get a pardon from President Andrew Johnson to allow his re-entry.

When he did return, he found a defeated, impoverished country whose social institutions were disrupted, if not destroyed. The former gentry had also retreated from the public arena in an attempt to recapture their antebellum life.

Bishop Lynch spent the rest of his days caring for blacks and whites with the painful realization that it would take decades - more than his lifetime - to restore the Catholic Church in South Carolina to its prewar status.

Another man whose influence helped shape his time was Bishop Ernest L. Unterkoefler, who joined the Poor People's March outside Charleston and entered the city with the marchers during the struggle for civil rights.

The emphasis on history in Fire Tried Gold was essential to the Diocese of Charleston in making the film, said the Rev. Geaney, the film's executive producer. ``I believe we have accomplished that quite well.''

The film, produced and directed by Gonzalo Accame, was shot mainly in Ireland and several South Carolina towns.

Interviews from Lutheran theologian Martin Marty; Edward Ball, author of Slaves in the Family; the Very Rev. Francis Kline, abbot of Mepkin Abbey near Moncks Corner, S.C.; Bishop Thompson and several others are included in the film.

Steven Ryan portrays Bishop England, and David-Raeford Davis plays Bishop Lynch in the docudrama written by the Rev. Geaney and John Landers. Richard Futch of Visual Edge Productions, based in Kensington, Md., did the casting.

The video is available for $19.95 through Pauline Books and Media, 243 King St., Charleston, SC 29401, or by calling (843) 577-0175.

Other films the Rev. Geaney made are Trappist and John Paul II, A Light for the Nations.

Trappist, filmed for Paulist Media Works and Charlotte Public Television station WTVI-TV in 1998, features Mepkin Abbey in a history of monasticism. It is available for $19.95 from Paulist Press, (800) 218-1903, paulist.org. A 176-page hard-cover book, titled Trappist, is also available for $35.

John Paul II, A Light for the Nations, a portrait of the pope through the eyes of his contemporaries, was filmed for ABC in 1997. It is available for $29.95 through the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Internet site, nccbuscc.org/ccc/videos.htm.

Tune inFire Tried Gold, a history of Catholicism in South Carolina, will air at 1 p.m. Sunday on WAGT-TV (Channel 26).

Reach Virginia Norton at (706) 823-3336 or vanorton@augustachronicle.com.