Journey Home

After experimenting with different religious ideas as a young man, Fr. Jonathan Mitchican became a Christian and followed a call to ordination in the Episcopal Church. Eventually, through history, liturgy, and authority, he felt drawn more and more to the Catholic Faith. He entered the Church in 2015, and in 2018, was ordained to the priesthood through the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. He now serves as chaplain of a Catholic high school in Texas, and has written extensively on the value of the Sacrament of Confession.

Jonathan Bieler was born in Switzerland, and came from a strong Swiss Reformed Church background, with multiple family members who had served in ministry; Jonathan even pursued studies in hopes of possibly becoming a pastor himself. His studies in theology eventually led him to the U.S., where he began working on a Masters at the Dominican House of Studies, and in the process, became more and more aligned with a Catholic worldview, entering the Church once back in Switzerland. He finished a Ph.D in patristics and theology, and then came back to the United States, where he now serves as a professor at the JPII Institute for Marriage and Family.

Pierce Benefield came from an Evangelical Christian family in Georgia, and got some good Bible basics from the Christian school he went to as a kid. As a young man, he became more serious about his faith, and began to explore Calvinism, and even briefly considered becoming a pastor. During COVID, he was working at the Post Office, and a coworker invited him to a Reformed congregation that began to zero him in on his faith further. For the first time, he started exploring the differences between forms of Christianity, and was startled at how strong the intellectual case was for Catholicism. In the course of this, he became convinced that he needed to come home to the Catholic Church.

Cary Klivan grew up Jewish in Brooklyn, and though he was culturally observant, he was spiritually agnostic, more along the lines of scientific materialism. He ended up marrying his childhood sweetheart, who happened to be one of the few Catholics in his neighborhood. He agreed to raise his children Catholic, because to him faith was just a cultural marker. The reality of becoming a father, however, got him asking deeper philosophical and spiritual questions. He began to see that the stories he learned in his Jewish background came to life anew in fulfilled form in Jesus, and suddenly, he found himself not only believing, but desiring to be baptized and serve the Church as a Permanent Deacon.

Mark DeYoung came from a Nazarene family, and was heavily involved in church. He went on to attend Trevecca Nazarene in Nashville, and then began work at a Christian music station, where he also hosted the morning show. During this time, he experienced some major challenges to his personal faith. When he began to rediscover it, it lead him to seminary studies, and eventually on staff at a seeker-friendly church. The toxicity he experienced there led him to leave ministry altogether, and wonder if he’d ever fit in at any church. After wrestling with alcohol, he realized he needed an anchor of stability that would align his faith and his personal life. Discovering Catholic media, he began to finally get real answers, and realized that his true spiritual home was in the Catholic Church.