The effect of this union was to increase the number of congregations, which by the end of 1845 amounted to about 300. Numbers of leading Catholics, professors and others, joined the movement; and learned Prostestants, like Gervinus, looked upon it as a momentous event in the history of Germany. Individual Protestant clergymen' went over to the body; and all those Protestants who, from dissatisfaction with the state church, had formed what are called "free" or independent congregations, entered more or less into relations with it. The local boards and magistracy also showed great favor to the cause, and often supported it by granting the use of Protestant churches, and even funds.
But German Catholicism was destined soon to find enemies both within and without. To say nothing of orthodox Catholics, conservative Protestantism began to suspect it as an of religion in general, and dangerous to the welfare of "church and state." And as the movement fell in with the liberal tendencies of the times in general, the governments took the alarm, and set themselves to check its spread. Saxony took the lead, and Prussia soon followed, in imposing vexatious, and even tyrannical restric tions upon the "Dissidents," as they were styled by the authorities. In Baden, they were even denied the rights of burghers, while Austria, then pre-eminent in religious bigotry, sent them out of her territories.
It was more, however, internal disagreements than state persecutions that checked the prosperity of German Catholicism, as was to be anticipated from the wide discrep ancy between the views of Czerski and those of Ronge. Czerski and his adherents held closely by the doctrines and ritual of Rome, and issued successive confessions, laying down more and more definitely the essential points of belief, such as the divinity of Christ, and other positive doctrines. Ronge's party, on the other hand, approached nearer and nearer to the Rationalists, and, leaving the province of religion altogether, occupied themselves with free-thinking theories and dcmocratical politics. This led to
numerous tlisagrements between congregations and clergymen, and discouraged the spread of the movement. When the second council was held in Berlin, in 1847, the interest had greatly declined.
When the great storm of 1848 burst, the German Catholics, as well as other bodies, had free space for their exertions, which, however, took mostly a political direction. Ronge was active in traveling and preaching, and although his free-thinking and political tendencies were repudiated by numbers of the body, they predominated in many places, and found expression in a series of publications, among others, in Rati's Catechism of the Christian Religion of Reason, and Schell's Book of Religion.- After the political reac tion set in, strong measures were taken against the German Catholics. The early enthusiasm of the movement apparently died out, and after the dissolution of the Frank fort parliament. Ronge retired to London. In 1850, a conference was held at Kothen between the German Catholics and the "Free Congregations" (Preie Gemeinden), an association of free-thinking congregations which had beengradually forming since 1844 by secession from the Protestant church. The'iminediate issue was a close confederation of the two bodies, followed in 1859 by an incorporative union of German Catholics and Free Congregations under the name Association of Free-religious Congregations. At this time the whole number of the congregations in the united body was 104; they received few subsequent additions, and are in a very unprosperous condition. See Kampe's Geschichte des Deutsch-Catholicismus (1860). For the Old Catholic movement in Germany, see DtiLLINGER.