Johannes Ronge - New Catholics

New Catholics

Ronge helped form the New Catholics, and served as Pastor for the first congregation in Breslau, which grew in less than a year to over 8,000 members. Ronge organized the New Catholics as a principally democratic organization. He ended the rule of celibacy for priests, excommunication, oral confessions, indulgences and other practices of the Catholic Church, and he married Bertha Meyer, sister of his friend Carl Schurz's wife, Margarethe. Ronge had also garnered support from Robert Blum, a newspaper publisher in Saxony, who published writings of the new movement.

Ronge's touring ministry brought about 100 new congregations to his movement. He decried declining spirituality and called for a separation from Rome, the formation of a German national church and an end to oral confession, priestly celibacy, Latin masses etc. During this time Johannes Czerski joined the movement. (In 1844, Czerski had resigned from his office in order to remove his congregation from the Roman Catholic Church.) A Leipzig council in 1845 brought the various congregations to a common agreement, and the number of congregations increased further to about 300. While free-thinking Protestants were sympathetic with the movement, the conservative Protestants did what they could to discourage it. Soon a split began within the movement between the more conservative Czerski and the more liberal Ronge, and an 1847 council in Berlin failed to mend it.

The New Catholics were later forced to change their name to German Catholics. A Protestant group analogous to the New Catholics, the Friends of the Light, joined with the German Catholics in 1849, forming the Freireligiöse ("free-thinkers") communities.

For his actions, Ronge was defrocked and excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.