Okay, interesting. Thank you.
What do you, Catholics and non-Catholics think about the PNCC then? Has it the fulness of truth?
Are they considered as Catholics, or are they protestants in your eyes?
What are the major differences in your opinion?
EDIT: I have just read that the PNCC doesn’t belong anymore to the Utrecht Union (this means that they are no “Real Old Catholics” anymore!). [Source =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_National_Catholic_Church - Paragraph History.].
The main reason was the ordination of Women. As far as I have read is the PNCC in the USA quite near to the RCC.
Esdra
The PNCC arose out of a very abusive pastoral situation in the American church. It was basically a case of poor stewardship on the part of the bishops.
BTW this same situation caused large numbers of Eastern Catholics to go Orthodox in the same time frame. The Poles and Lithuanians, being Latin rite Catholics, had seemingly no where else to go.
Naturally the Polish American community (also Lithuanians and some other disaffected ethnic communities) was split over this crises. Some priests who would have wanted to leave were afraid to break with the Papacy, but there was a wide undercurrent within the ranks of the Catholic church’s priesthood which still had doubts over the new Papal dogmas after the Vatican Council I in 1870AD. So these men were willing to make the break over what to them were basically parochial issues. The fact that the larger church may have promulgated false doctrine in their opinion only made the need for action more urgent.
These Polish priests never considered that they would cease being Catholics (something like the SSPX today) and at the time the Old Catholics in Europe were still very orthodox in theology, so that’s where they turned for bishops. One might say it was an available port during the storm.
Theologically, the PNCC have followed Augustine like their predecessors, which probably explains why they have not seemingly become close to the Orthodox in the past. They named their seminary after Father Girolamo Savonarola. They developed very close relations to the Anglicans (the Protestant Episcopal church-TEC in particular) for an extended period of time, and co-consecrated a few bishops.
One nice thing about them is that their parishes are invariably small, one can really feel like part of the community.
‘Fullness’ is a hard commodity to pin down. They seem to profess all of the Latin Catholic essentials with the notable exception of the two Papal dogmas. Obviously, the Latin Catholic church thinks that they have something going for them, because members of the PNCC are welcome to partake in holy Communion in the Latin Catholic church, *even though they do not believe in two modern Latin Catholic de Fide dogma *(receiving while rejecting these dogma is something even a Latin Catholic is not actually permitted to do, but a formal exception is made for these people). I think that this is very significant symbolically, if perhaps a misguided ecumenical practice.
My personal opinion would be the same for the PNCC as for the Latin Catholic church or the SSPX. If one were to be OK, they probably all are (if I were a Latin in theology I would have no trouble attending the local parish of the PNCC). The fact of the matter is as an Orthodox Christian I can’t know right now because my church is not in formal communion with either one and communion with the Orthodox is the only litmus test I can really apply, just as communion with a Pope is the only litmus test most Catholics can apply.
