From Agnosticism to Protestantism to Catholicism to the Seminary

Fr John Bartunek, LC received his BA in History from Stanford University in 1990, graduating cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He comes from an evangelical Christian background and became a member of the Catholic Church in 1991. After college he worked as a high school history teacher, drama director, and baseball coach. He spent a year as a professional actor in Chicago before entering the religious Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ in 1993. He has since received ecclesiastical degrees in philosophy and theology and worked in youth and college ministries. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 2003. He is currently studying for a licentiate degree in Moral Theology in Rome, where he resides. Fr John recently published "Inside the Passion", the only authorized, behind-the-scenes look at "The Passion of the Christ".

Three months ago, at the age of 35, I was ordained a priest, in Rome, on Christmas Eve. It was the culmination of a long spiritual journey that took me from agnosticism, to Protestantism, to Catholicism, and eventually into the seminary. Here's how it happened.

I grew up in a family that stressed human values like honesty and hard work, but we didn't have any religious formation at all. My mother had died when I was only a boy, and my father was suspicious of all organized religion. Nevertheless, through the influence of my older sister and some good friends, when I was 14 years old I had a born again experience in a protestant church in other words, I became a believer in Jesus and in the inspiration of the Bible.

My father wasn't too happy with this turn of events, and so after a short year of involvement with that church, I had to leave it behind, and I became an undercover Christian, still praying and reading the Bible on my own, but not going to church.

A few years later I went off to study history at Stanford University near San Francisco, California. That was far away from my native Cleveland, Ohio, and I was free to practice whatever religion I wanted to. So once again I began going to church. 

While I was at Stanford I had my first and definitive encounter with Catholicism. I was studying history, and my studies took me to Europe, where I lived for seven months in Florence, Italy and for four months in Krakow, Poland. Italy and Poland are both very Catholic countries, and while I was there, I came into contact with Catholic art, history, and faith. Even though my Protestant pastors had tried to teach me that Catholics aren't true followers of Christ, while I was in Europe I began to see for myself that the Catholic Church was not only centered squarely on Jesus Christ, but it was in fact the very Church that Christ had founded upon the Rock of St Peter.

During that year I began to fall in love with the Catholic Church. It sounds funny, but it's true. I literally began to feel myself drawn to the Catholic Church. I started to study the history of the Church in depth. I began to pray the Rosary. I began attending Mass. Little by little God was showing me the way to my vocation, because the more I learned, the more I fell in love, and finally I reached a point where I felt a deep desire to give my life entirely to the service of God's Church.

Soon after that, a friend gave me a brochure about the Legionaries of Christ. I read the prayer for vocations on the back of the brochure, a prayer written by our founder, Fr Maciel.  It summarized everything that God had put into my heart, and I knew then that God had created me to be his Legionary. The prayer goes like this: Grant saintly priests to the world, priests who live close to the Eucharist, with deep spiritual lives, who work and suffer but with joyful hearts; priests who give every moment of their lives for the salvation of souls and the triumph of your Kingdom. Amen.