Biography
Johannes Ronge was born in 1813 in Bischofswalde (now Biskupów) in Upper Silesia, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia (now in Poland). Ronge was educated at Breslau (1837–1839), entered the Roman Catholic priesthood (1840), and was settled at Grottkau (1841). His liberal tendencies brought him into frequent conflict with the Roman Catholic authorities. When he published criticisms of the relation between Rome and the Breslau Cathedral chapter in the Sächsischen Vaterlandsblättern, he was suspended in consequence (1843). He then went to Laurahütte in Upper Silesia as a teacher, and while there the exhibition of the Holy Coat at Treves, used by Bishop Arnoldi of Trier to increase pilgrimage and church revenue so stirred his ire that he denounced it in print (1 October 1844) in a public letter to Bishop Arnoldi. He published in succession a number of pamphlets in which he called on the Roman Catholic laity and the lower clergy to leave the communion of that Church. These were generally understood to be written from the standpoint of deism; and in subsequent years Ronge pronounced himself more and more unreservedly in favor of deistic doctrines.
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