Lithuanian National Catholic Church
[2] Immigrants wanted to establish their own parishes where priests would speak their language, but received little support from American bishops who were mainly of Irish and German descent.
In 1884, a meeting of American bishops in Baltimore decided that property of parishes belonged not to the community that financed it but to the diocese.
[2] Due to the historic union between Poland and Lithuania, the Lithuanian National Catholic Church first operated as a section of PNCC.
[6] While Mickevičius (died in 1923) was a vocal advocates of separation from PNCC, other Lithuanian priests, including John Gritenas and Mykolas Valadka, were more ambivalent.
When Lithuanians migrated to the United States to escape the Soviet occupation in the aftermath of World War II, the new generation of immigrants did not support LNCC.
[8] In 1937, Geniotis visited Lithuania and claimed to have established a parish of LNCC in his native village of Repšiai [lt] near Mažeikiai.
They managed to recruit Juozas Pilypaitis, a priest from Sudargas, but his open letter published in a regional newspaper remained unnoticed by the Lithuanian society.
[9] When Pope Pius XII issued a decree excommunicating collaborators with communists in July 1949, Soviet officials attempted to force Lithuanian priests sign a protest letter and use it as the basis for establishing the national church.
The effort did not gain a momentum – only 108 priests out of 933 signed the letter – and the idea of the national church was abandoned in favor of other methods of persecution of Christians.
[9] LNCC did not develop a more distinct identity or mission – it was a rival of the traditional Roman Catholic Church, but offered only "bureaucratic" differences (i.e. rejection of papal authority and adoption of a more democratic parish governance) without altering the underlying religious dogmas.
The church practiced both individual and communal confessions and criticized clerical celibacy, but did not develop its own coherent dogmatic theology or apologetics.
LNCC conducted the masses in Lithuanian, but that turned out to be a disadvantage in the long-run as immigrants increasingly adopted the English language.
[11] The LNCC parish of the Providence of God in Scranton was established by Stasys B. Mickevičius in 1913 and continues to operate.
The parish purchased a 100-acre (40 ha) farm, established a shelter for the elderly (named after Vilnius; established in 1924 and closed after Gritėnas' death in 1928 due to financial difficulties), built a clergy house and a hall for parish events (named after Grand Duke Vytautas).
The parish also had a Sunday school with children's theater and a choir which sang in Lithuanian even though some members were third generation immigrants.
After his death, the parish priests were of Polish origin: Edward Ratajack (1974–1984), Jerzy Urbanski (1983–1987), L. Lazarski (1987–1990), Stanislaus Stryz (1990–2002), Walter Placek (since 2002).
Mickevičius established a priest seminary which prepared Steponas A. Geniotis, Stasys Šleinys, Žvalionis and S. Tautas for priesthood.
