The Polish Independent Parishes Movement in the United States of North America

Abstract

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States in the XIXth and XXth centuries found itself in specific conditions. On the one hand, there were democratic patterns of the functioning of American state structures and Protestant fellowships. On the other, there was a mass influx of immigrants from many different Catholic European countries. These factors became a source of various conflicts between the faithful and the hierarchy. The faithful, sometime joined by their priests, demanded greater democratization of church life and pastoral care which would agree with the traditions of their country of origin. The hierarchy, supported by the majority of the clergy who attempted to intensify the assimilation processes by favoring pastoral care which tended to accelerate the Americanization of immigrants. Those conflicts led to the establishment of so-called independent parishes whose authors identified themselves totally with the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. They opposed it only within the sphere of administrative rules. These parishes were established among various national groups. There was not only a quantitative growth, in the Polish ethnic group, but also a qualitative one. The paper presents particular stages of this progress which started from individual parishes, which after a certain time either returned to their mother Church or were dispersed. Then there were attempts to create a common program and a common ideology. Finally, on the third stage arose three extraparochial centers in Chicago, Ill., in Buffalo, N. Y., and in Scranton, Penn. The centralization of the Movement in the first two centers underwent mainly at the organizational level and it consisted exclusively in concentrating particular parishes around two leaders: bp Kozłowski and bp Kamin´ ski. Thus, these centers were closed almost immediately after the bishops’ death. The center in Scranton, however, thanks to that that it was based on national ideas, was transformed into an actual center of independent parishes movement, out of which grew the Polish National Catholic Church, which has been existing until now. The history of the Polish independent parishes movement in the United States, as it has been presented in the paper, constitutes then an essential contribution to the history of that Church.