Jane, I certainly agree with you on Michael's historical outline.  I doubt, very much, that any of our Catholic ancestors were privy to anything discussed in the early years of the 20th Century [certainly not before that time, either].  Actually---in the late 19th Century, Rome highly suspected the Catholic Church in America [while observers saw the American hierarchy as being the most submissive in the world].  There was actually an "Americanism" controversy that occurred after Pius IX's death.  This was related to its fear of "Modernism."  "Modernism" was a label Rome had given to a movement among Catholic theologians to update Catholic scholarship.  In particular, Catholic biblical scholars were applying certain new methods---developed by Protestant scholars---to study the study of the Bible.  These scholars wanted to know historical context in which the Bible was written so that they could better understand the Bible on its own terms.