Thomas T. McAvoy has written in his study of “Americanism” in the Roman Catholic Church: “The history of the modernist controversy in this country has not been written and the destruction of pertinent records will make such a study very difficult.”. “Modernism” was quite evidently a movement within the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. It had its roots and took its strength there. There, too, it was destroyed. For the most part, American Catholics did not contribute to “modernism”s evolution, development and defeat. But eventually the main current of “modernism” in Europe rolled its waves onto American shores. Amidst many other streams, its waters flowed into the life of one man, William L. Sullivan, an Irish Catholic and Paulist priest.