Roman Catholic ecclesiology at that time was a
product of reaction to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, a certain
centralization of papal and Roman curial power in the aftermath of the Council of Trent
(1545-63), and a strong development of the institutional understanding of the church over
against the politics and culture of the nineteenth century that was solidified at the First
Vatican Council in 1870 and the reaction to “Modernism” about 1907.