GERMAN-CATHOLICS. - The spiritual climate in which this sect arose was the rationalism of the Enlightenment type, still sufficiently widespread in certain circles of German Catholics in the first half of the 19th century to stir up broad waves of discontent against the forms in which the Catholic revival in Germany was just then announcing itself among the clergy and the people.
The fusion of the schismatic communities founded shortly before (1845) by the two rebel priests Ronge (v.) and Czerski (v.), to which other groups soon added themselves, was the concrete origin of the new sect, which at first took the name "Allgemeine christliche Kirche". On 23 March 1845 it celebrated its first "council" at Leipzig, also changing its name to that of "Deutschkatholische Kirche".
In the Confessio fidei that the new sect gave itself on that occasion, the rationalistic tendency prevailed completely. Its main points are: Scripture as the sole norm of faith (with the consequent denial of the ecclesiastical magisterium and of the Primacy), abolition of sacramental Confession and of indulgences, of ecclesiastical celibacy, of the veneration of saints, relics and sacred images, abolition of fasts and pilgrimages; of the Sacraments only Baptism and the Supper (under both kinds) were retained, replacing the Mass with a liturgy in German devoid of a Canon. More than this confusion, what held the movement together was its anti-Roman and nationalistic spirit. The movement, which always had its most numerous nucleus in Silesia, reached its peak in 1847: at the "Council" of Berlin (25-29 May) 259 communities with about 60-80,000 adherents were represented. In 1846 it also spread among the Germans dwelling in North America and after 1848 also in Bavaria and Austria.
At the same time, however, its internal unity was crumbling; various circles, dissatisfied with Ronge's excessively liberal tendency, broke away, founding on 15 July 1846 the group of the "Protestkatholiken". Ronge's movement, ever more reduced in numbers and more empty of religious content, united in 1859 with the atheistic organization "Bund freier religiöser Gemeinden Deutschlands", which in its turn in 1921 merged with the "Freidenkerbund" to form the "Volksbund für Geistesfreiheit" and continued in it the struggle against every form of positive Christianity and in particular against the Catholic Church. The history of the German Catholics is interesting more than in itself because it presents the characteristics and the typical evolution of the sects that broke away from the Church in the 19th century: rationalism and nationalism, ending in free thought and in the struggle against every form of positive Christianity.
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Igino Rogger