Delegates to the 1907 Catholic Educational Association in Milwaukee expressed a remarkably optimistic mood. The twentieth century seemed to portend the fulfillment of American Catholic educational dreams. The Catholic Church had a magnificent educational past, declared the Reverend William Turner (1871–1936), scholar, religious journalist, professor and librarian at Catholic University, and future bishop of Buffalo, but it had long been distorted by anti-Catholic historians. There was desperate need for an accurate history of Catholic education written by a scholarly Catholic and “from the sources themselves.” Though it was obvious that an historian should write this history, it was even more obvious that this historian also be a professional educator. For “unless the person who writes a history of education has a knowledge of pedagogical methods and has some practice and experience, the history, I think, had better not be written.”