GERMAN CATHOLICS, a religious sect which sprang up in Germany about the close of 1844, which rapidly increased during the four or five following years and then as rapidly declined. The immediate cause of the forma tion of this sect was the exhibition by Arnoldi, bishop of Treves, of the holy coat preserved in the cathedral of that city and said to be the coat of Christ. The bishop accompanied the exhi bition of the holy coat by a promise of plenary indulgence to whoever should make a pilgrim age to Troves to honor it. The announcement of this proceeding on the part of the bishop of Troves produced a feeling of general astonish ment in Germany and drew from a Silesian priest called J. Ronge, who had already been suspended from his charge on account of his independent views, a letter protesting against the exhibition of the holy coat and denouncing the projected pilgrimage as idolatry. This letter was published in the (Sichsische Vaterlands bliitter' on 16 Oct. 1844, and produced an amount of excitement that was quite unantici pated by the writer. Ronge was excommuni cated, but this only increased the general en thusiasm in his favor, and when he entered into relations with Czerski, another independent priest who had seceded from the Church, and made along with him an appeal to the lower grades of the clergy to unite in founding a National German Church independent of the Pope and governed by councils and synods, the appeal received a ready answer from a con siderable number of those .to whom it was addressed. A number of congregations belong ing to the new body were formed in the more important towns, especially in Leipzig, under the celebrated Robert Blum, and in Magdeburg under the teacher Kote. In the spring of 1845 there were already about 100. At this time (March 1845) a council was summoned to meet in Leipzig to deliberate on the affairs of the body. Only 20 congregations were repre sented there, but these nevertheless at once proceeded under the presidency of Professor Wigard to arrange a system of doctrine and practice which was to form the basis of union for the whole Church. The Bible was recog nized as the sole standard of faith and its in terpretation was left to reason, °penetrated and animated" by the Christian idea. Only two sacraments were admitted, baptism and the Lord's Supper. In matters of ritual each con gregation was left free to carry into practice its own views. The organism of the new Church was almost the same as that of the Presbyterian dissenting churches of Scotland. Each con gregation was to choose its own pastor and elders. Affairs of a general interest were en trusted to the management of a general council to meet every five years, but the decisions of this council were to be ratified by a majority of the congregations before they came valid. The confession of sins, the hierarthy of the clergy and the celibacy of the priests were abolished and the authority of the Pope was not recognized. On the subject of purgatory nothing was declared either for or against it. The constitution of the new Church was thus a Protestant one, but in some respects the Ger man Catholics went even further than the majority of Protestants in a liberal direction, inasmuch as they claimed for all, complete re ligious liberty and declared their religion to be capable of development and modification with the progress of the human mind.
The Church established on this basis had at first, as has already been stated, great success. The most eminent men of the liberal party re garded the movement with sympathy, or at least with interest. Gervinus expressed his belief that great benefits might result from it. Many Protestants, dissatisfied with the subjection of their religion to state supervision, joined the body, which, at the end of 1845, counted 298 congregations. But it was not long before the spirit of opposition began to show itself. The majority of the governments in Germany at the instigation both of the Protestant and the Roman Catholic clergy began to use re pressive measures against the new body. Prus sia contented itself with regulating the exercise of their worship; but some of the other states went further. At Baden the adherents of the sect were deprived of their political rights. Austria took the course of banishing them from her dominions. But persecution from without did less hurt than the divisions within the body. Almost immediately after the meeting of the council at Leipzig a congregation had been formed at Berlin which refused to abide by its decisions. Czerski and R,onge, the two origi nators of the sect, became the leaders of two opposing parties within it, one of which, that headed by Czerski, clung to the traditions and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, re jecting only the supremacy of the Pope and the union between Church and State; while the other sought for more freedom, converted re ligion into a sort of popular philosophy and began to mix up with it questions of politics, exhibiting strong democratic tendencies. These were most plainly manifest during the revo lutionary epoch of 1848. The schism between the two parties was then complete. One section of the congregations of German Catholics pro fessed to have only religious ends in view, while another section openly pronounced itself in favor of socialistic principles.
From the year 1850, however, there were several attempts to re-establish the unity of the body. An effort was made to reintroduce har mony by widening the basis of union. Instead of founding a religion, a council held at Gotha in June 1859, proposed the formation of a religious association or confederation into which all free Protestant and even Jewish con gregations were to be admitted. Legislation in the different states had become more tolerant and the carrying out of the scheme of the council of Gotha seemed to be at least prac ticable. But the result proved otherwise. The associations consisted of too heterogeneous ele ments. While some of the members receding further and further from orthodoxy proclaimed simple design as their religion and abolished baptism and the Lord's Supper, others on the contrary lost themselves in an exaggerated mysticism. According to the most recent sta tistics there are still about 100 congregations of German Catholics in Germany; but their num bers only amounted to about 6,200 in 1895. Consult Bauer, der Griindung and Fortbildung der deutschkatholischen Kirche' (Meissen 1885) ; Kampe, 'Wesen des Deutsch katholicismus' (Tubingen 1850) ; Findel, 'Der Deutschkatholicismus in Sachsen) (Leipzig 1895).