20th-century history of the Catholic Church in the United States 20th-century history of the Catholic Church in the United States The 20th-century history of the Catholic Church in the United States was characterized by a period of continuous growth for the Church in the United States, with Catholics progressively evolving from a small minority to a large minority. In 1900 the Catholic population was 10 million, under the control of 14 Archbishops, 77 bishops, and 12,000 priests . The community had built 10,000 churches, of which two-thirds had resident pastors. Catholic schools educated nearly 1,000,000 children and youth. Catholics were heavily concentrated in the industrial and mining centers of the
Collegiality in the Catholic Church Martin V. The Council of Constance also claimed that all Christians, including the Pope, were bound to obey councils "in matters pertaining to faith, the ending of the schism, and the reform of the church." This claim was short-lived and the conciliar movement soon ran out of steam. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period some church historians have called the "long nineteenth century," saw a further consolidation of papal authority. In 1870 the First Vatican Council decreed the infallibility of the Pope's teachings, although during the council Cardinal Filippo Maria Guidi, O.P., of Bologna objected that the Pope