The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) is a Christian church founded and based in the United States by Polish-Americans who were Roman Catholic. However, the PNCC is today not in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and differs with it theologically in several important respects. While the PNCC continues to affirm its Polish heritage, many parishes now refer to themselves as "National Catholic" Churches.
As of November 2006, the PNCC has 126 parishes in the United States and Canada, with membership of 60,000, according to its report to the National Council of Churches.[1]

History
The PNCC is a longstanding member of the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.
From 1907 until 2003 the PNCC was a member of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht, and for much of that time was the only member church of the Union based outside Europe. However, in the 1970s this relationship grew strained, as there was a gradual shift towards liberalism in the rest of Utrecht Union churches, as opposed to a trend towards conservatism in the PNCC.[3] 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 the past 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." (The following year the Old Catholic Church in Slovakia seceded from the Union over similar issues.) However, in 2004 the cathedral of the PNCC's Canadian diocese (St. John's Cathedral, Toronto) was reconciled with the Union and is once again in full communion with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto.
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.
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 Roman Catholic view of the sacraments and other issues.
Dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church led in 1996 to an arrangement of "limited inter-communion" between the two churches.[4] Subsequent dialogue has been affected by the PNCC reception of some former Roman Catholic clergy, and this was acknowledged in a 2006 joint statement between the two groups. Other obstacles to full communion cited in the 2006 statement include different views of the role of the Pope, and the level of involvement of the laity in church governance.[5]
A group of Catholics in Norway who split from the Lutheran state Church of Norway, who go by the name Nordic Catholic Church, are under the auspices of the Polish National Catholic Church, and according to some articles will have a bishop consecrated by the PNCC soon.