Polish National Catholic Church - Ecumenical Relationships

Ecumenical Relationships

The PNCC is a longstanding member of the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.

In the 1970s the PNCC's relationship with the Utrecht Union grew strained as there was a gradual shift towards what was regarded as liberalism in the rest of Utrecht Union churches while the PNCC was becoming more conservative. The PNCC in the United States and Canada entered into a state of "impaired communion" with the Utrecht Union in 1997, since the PNCC did not accept the validity of ordaining women to the priesthood, which most other Utrecht Union churches had been doing for several years. The PNCC continued to refuse full communion with those churches that ordained women; thus, in 2003 the International Old Catholic Bishops' Conference expelled the PNCC from the Utrecht Union, determining that "full communion, as determined in the statute of the IBC, could not be restored and that therefore, as a consequence, the separation of our Churches follows."

For some years the PNCC had inter-communion with the Episcopal Church in the United States, but in 1978 the PNCC terminated this relationship in response to the latter's decision to ordain women to the priesthood. In 2004 the cathedral of the PNCC's Canadian diocese, St. John's Cathedral, Toronto, re-established full communion with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, before being reconciled with the Canadian diocese of the PNCC in 2009.

Although the PNCC has entered into tentative negotiations with Orthodox Churches in North America, no union has resulted due to the PNCC's substantial adherence to the Catholic view of the sacraments and other issues.

Relations with the Roman Catholic Church improved notably since the 1970s, particularly after the ascension of the Polish-born John Paul II to the Papacy.

Dialogue with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, with the approval of the Holy See, led in 1996 to an arrangement that Laurence J. Orzell has called "limited inter-communion". What this means is that the Catholic Church recognises the validity of the sacraments of the PNCC, making applicable to its members the provisions of canon 844 §§2–3 of the Code of Canon Law. This canon allows Catholics who are unable to approach a Catholic minister to receive, under certain conditions, the sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist and Anointing of the Sick from "non-Catholic ministers ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid", and declares it licit for Catholic priests to administer the same three sacraments to members of churches which the Holy See judges to be in the same condition in regard to the sacraments as the Eastern Churches, if they ask for the sacraments of their own accord and are properly disposed. Obstacles to full communion include different understandings regarding the role of the Pope, the level of involvement of the laity in church governance and the PNCC reception of some former Roman Catholic clergy, most of whom subsequently married.

A group of Norwegians, who split from the Lutheran state Church of Norway and go by the name Nordic Catholic Church, are under the auspices of the Polish National Catholic Church within the Union of Scranton. The PNCC has also taken a former Episcopal church in Italy under its wing.