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Communication
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To the Editor:
Permit me a few comments in response to Jeffrey Jozefski's "The Role of Polish and American identities in the future of the Polish National Catholic Church" (Vol. LXV, No. 2, Autumn 2008).
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When one undertakes to seek an understanding of the Polish National Catholic Church of America with an eye toward its future, it is perhaps necessary to first have a more complete grasp of how it is that this improbable Church, organized in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century by Polish immigrants, has ever had a future. Who would have predicted that the relatively late-coming stirrings in Scranton would become the dominant outcome of a religious independence movement that had already seen the formation of not only significant independent parishes but of other nascent religious denominations with bishops and synods?
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Who would have predicted that the Polish National Catholic Church would within the first generation of its organization successfully establish a missionary branch of itself in the homeland of those same immigrants, Roman Catholic Poland? Who would have predicted that the PNC Church would still continue to exist more than a hundred years later?
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Who would have predicted that the "American establishment" Episcopal Church, after generations of ecumenical outreach, would have succeeded to establish intercommunion with only one other American Church, the immigrant-formed Polish National Catholic Church? Who would have predicted that after a generation of on-going intercommunion it would be the PNCC that would break off the intercommunion with the Episcopal Church?
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Who would have predicted that the Polish National Catholic Church (called by some the most significant schism of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States) and the Roman Catholic Church would be the first to hold a service of peace and forgiveness together in America? Or that a cardinal would come from Rome to Scranton for the service? Or that the Roman Catholic Church would recognize the validity of the Holy Orders, the Apostolic Succession, of the PNC Church? That is, that its priests really are priests and its bishops really are bishops, and that when there is a need, its Sacraments may be received by all. Yet, union or reunion has not occurred. All of which suggests that one might do well to approach the question of the future of the PNCC with some caution. |
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Mr. Jozefski and other students of the PNC Church might further deepen their understanding of it by considering its roots in Poland. What, for example, was happening there at the time when the immigrants to America began to leave? Was the Socialist movement in Europe significant there? What was the significance of the "organic work" movement? How did industrialization and urbanization in Poland affect the rural folk? Did the work of Rev. Stanis¬aw Stoja¬owski in Poland have any influence in American Polonia or on Polonian leaders? Was it of any significance that at least three members of the interwar Polish Sejm, including party leader Jan Stapinski, were members of the tiny new American Church?
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Are nationalism and nationality issues the same thing, related or different? What does "National" in the Polish National Catholic Church name mean? Were PNCC adherents and supporters members of a nationality or a nationalism movement? Was "the nation" the old szlachta or the folk? How significant were the social class issues? Were human rights an important factor in people's thinking? As literacy began to rise and awareness expand, what did "modernization" mean? What was the basis for the mutual self-help ideology? What did "democracy" mean to these people?
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Were the formation of parish committees, lay oversight of parish and Church finances, lay participation in synods, the election of bishops by laity and clergy delegates, a purely American phenomenon or were Polish people organizing in Poland too to deal with similar issues as well as others? Where does the question of celibacy or married clergy fit into the picture?
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Are any of these matters relevant today? Has the PNC Church fulfilled its mission? Is it fulfilling its mission? Has it failed to fulfill its mission? Has it followed the typical path and become just one more small American denomination or does it yet hold the seeds of unexpected developments?
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Theodore L. Zawistowski |
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