The history and tradition of the Polish National Catholic Church’s is the life and history of its people and their relationship with their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The documents, hymns, and writings of the Church, and its civic action all reference its relationship with Labor. That relationship was founded so that the struggles of its members would not go unheeded, but rather to support them in prevailing in their fight for freedom, recognition, fair treatment and wages as workers, and their dignity as citizens and Christians.

These references include, from the Hymn of the Polish National Catholic Church:

Now again He comes from heaven,
Midst the lab’ring, toiling people,
In the form of Bread and God’s Word,
To His humble, needful people.
To His humble, needful people.

From the Hymn of Faith:

To Thee we come, O Lord our God,
Before Thine altar Father,
Thou knowest best our yearning hearts,
This supplication answer.
Lift up from want thy people, Lord.
Bless us O God, O Father bless our toil.

Under Thy Cross we stand prepared,
To serve Thee with devotion,
Be it with sweat of blood or tears,
Or humble resignation.
For we Thy people are, O Lord,
Save us O God, O Father bless our toil.

The Church, addressing criticism of Bishop Hodur’s support for workers and their efforts. Some saw a necessity for removing religion from the workers movement. From Straz (21 January 1910):

As it was in 1897, so it is today in the year 1910, that Bishop Hodur is a supporter of reform in the civil or the social spirit, he is for the nationalization of the land, of churches, schools, factories, mines and the means of production. He has stated this openly and states it publicly today, he does not hide his sympathies for the workers’ movement and he will never hide them, and he considers himself nothing else than a worker in God’s Church.

But the bishop is an opponent of erasing religion from the cultural work of humanity — indeed, Bishop Hodur believes strongly and is convinced that all progress, growth, just and harmonious shaping of human relations must come from a religious foundation, lean on Divine ethics, and then such growth will be permanent and will give humanity happiness.

Bishop Hodur stood with strikers and those in the Labor movement. He participated in strikes and supported striking workers, and called the PNCC together to respond to the Lattimer Massacre. The following is from a November 30, 1919 speech at a reception for delegate Maciej Łacszczyński, editor of a labor newspaper in Poland and a delegate to the International Conference of Workers held in Washington. The address was attended by members of congress and John T. Dempsey, President of the United Mine Workers Union:

One of the greatest achievements of modern civilization is respect and honor for human labor. ln the past, labor was undervalued, work was shameful, and what goes with that, working people were mistreated and abused. There was kowtowing and bowing before those who did not need to work hard, and those who did work hard and with their toil created wealth and fed others were regarded as half-free or slaves. Even the greatest of the ancient thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle regarded this economic system as just and the only one recommended, in which a minority rules and possesses full rights of citizenship and the majority works and produces. This majority of people had no rights, it was not free. And such a system lasted whole ages.

Truly Jesus Christ came on earth as the greatest teacher of humankind, the spiritual regenerator, and he condemned a social order based on cruelty and injustice, and His immediate disciples tried to create a new order, the Kingdom of God on earth, but the exponents of force and exploitation soon managed to gain for themselves the leaders of the Christian Church and impose on them their points of view. And the entire Middle Ages, that is, for about a thousand years more, this unjust system was tolerated, this order in which two castes, that is, the magnates, nobles and clergy, possessed rights and privileges; townspeople had limited rights, but the great masses of peasants and laborers were without rights, without influence whatsoever. It was not even permitted to change one’s lord. One was tied to the field or to the workplace like some kind of thing without a soul.

Not until the beginning of the nineteenth century were the commandments of Christ the Lord remembered, His teaching about the worthiness and value of labor. But it was not the priests, not the bishops, not the pope – these representatives of the Christian Church – who recalled this splendid teaching of Christ about the value of the human soul and labor, but lay people, first in England, then in France. It began to be taught that work is the foundation of the social structure, that work is the source of wealth, prosperity and happiness, and what goes with this, that it is not the nobility, not the magnates, not those presently ruling who should be the ruling class, but if there is to be a ruling class then it should be the working class.

And from that time, that is, more or less from the middle of the last century, begins the organization of workers on a larger scale in the name of the rights of man, in the name of the value and worthiness of labor. Everything that workers did in the name of their slogans was good.

And today one may say boldly that the cause of labor is the most important one, and that progress, the development and happiness of the whole nation, of all mankind, depends on its just resolution. Workers today have more privileges than they have ever had.

In this reasonable and just struggle for rights, bread for the family and education for children, for common control of the wealth created by the worker, our holy Church stands before the worker like a pillar of fire, and the hand of Christ blesses him in his work.