The '''Independent Catholic churches''' are churches which have broken away from the [[Roman Catholic Church]] while retaining most of its liturgy, traditions and theology. By contrast, the [[Protestant]] churches also broke away, but they rejected a great deal of its traditions in the process.
It is important to distinguish these groups from the [[Eastern Catholic]] churches which--while which—while they follow Eastern rather than Roman traditions--do traditions—do so as part of the [[Roman Catholic Church]]; from groups such as [[Anglo-Catholics]] who remain part of the [[Anglican]] Churches but see Anglicanism as closer to Catholicism than Protestantism; and from a similar movement among the [[Lutheran]] churches known as [[Evangelical Catholicism]]. It also is important to keep separate the original sense of ''catholic'' (such as in the Nicene creed), meaning universal, and the concept of all Christian churches being deemed to be part of the universal, i.e. catholic, church.
There is no single Independent Catholic church. There are many such churches, with completely contrary beliefs to each other. Several of these hold the belief that they are the true Roman Catholic Church, and that the mainstream Roman Catholic Church has fallen into heresy or apostasy. We can group them into a few categories: