Staying home

Religion | Many conservative Anglicans have reasons beyond culture for rejecting a papal invitation into Roman Catholicism | Alisa Harris

Associated Press/Photo by Amy Gutierrez

Karon Gibson was a busy nurse whose business occupied her seven days a week. Her church attendance was sporadic until she retired a few years ago and made the commitment to go to church faithfully. Since then, she has missed only once when she injured her knee and couldn't stand up. To keep her commitment to church, though, she has stopped going to the Episcopalian churches where she grew up and got married, and has started going to the Roman Catholic Church instead.

The services were nearly the same, she found, but the Roman Catholics had more services and more locations. Given her hectic travel schedule, it worked well.

When she found that the Vatican had made a decision to welcome conservative Episcopalians and Anglicans into the Roman Catholic communion, she welcomed the news. While the services were nearly identical, the Roman Catholic Church wasn't plagued by the political issues that haunted the Episcopalians: the ordination of openly homosexual bishops and female priests. It just went against tradition, she said: "I'm very much into tradition. I have no objection to women being nuns or being great successes. I just think that some things have a conservative view and there's tradition to be followed."