"My hope is to be ordained to the priesthood of the Catholic Church," Gipson said. "I would like to practice that priesthood in any way that's useful to the ordinariate."
"I've been a parish priest all of my life in the Episcopal Church, for 42 years," Gipson said. "That's where my enthusiasm is, at the level of the parish, teaching and preaching, pastoral ministry."
There are at least 69 candidates for the Catholic priesthood undergoing formation for possible ordination in the ordinariate. The ordinariate has ordained 24 priests since its launch in January. Many of them are married men ordained under a special dispensation in place since 1983.
Gipson said he is "deeply grateful" for his 58 years in the Episcopal Church
"The clergy and the people of the Episcopal Church gave me and my family more in the way of acceptance and support and generosity and love than we could ever have imagined or have deserved," he said. "Each day serving was a blessing. It prepared me for, and gave me a yearning, for the Catholic Church in its fullness in all aspects of Christ's Church.
The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion have faced much controversy in recent decades over the interpretation of Scripture, the ordination of women as priests, Christian sexual morality and other issues.
"I see the controversies as an outcome of the nature of authority in the Anglican Church and the Anglican Communion," Gipson said. There are 34 provincial churches in the communion which are autonomous.
"Without a magisterium to interpret and define the faith, what Anglicanism relies on is dispersed authority rather than centralized authority," he added.
"What I realized of course is that the Anglican tradition about authority is a part of the identity of Anglicanism, and Anglicanism does not wish to change that manner of authority," Gipson explained. "The Anglican Communion wishes authority to be dispersed. I decided that I could not ask Anglicanism to change its identity for me, so I was the one that had to do the changing."
He asked Catholics to show "patience" towards new members of the ordinariate and the Catholic Church.
"We're just learning how to be good Catholics and there's a lot to learn," he said.
(Story continues below)
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Correction: updated on Dec. 11, 2012 at 12:24 p.m., MST. Article incorrectly described St. Martin's parishioners as George W. and Laura Bush. Parishioners are in fact George H.W. and Barbara Bush.
Kevin J. Jones is a senior staff writer with Catholic News Agency. He was a recipient of a 2014 Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship.