St. John Ogilvie Prayerbook

“So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition.” -G.K. Chesterton

After years of misery with Anglo-centered Catholic spirituality, I took matters into my own hands. When I was confirmed into the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, I responded to the question, “Do you believe everything Holy Mother Church teaches to be divinely revealed by God?” with a nervous surrender of will, “I do.”

As a former Evangelical Presbyterian, former atheist, Jewish Christian raised Bapticostal, I embraced the rich history and magisterial teaching of the Church of New Covenant Israel. Thanks to the missionary zeal of those first Nazarenes who spread the new covenant by baptism to the εθνοι, the nations, we Celts eventually responded to leave our idolatry and superstition. Many of us embraced the Way of Salvation and Light out of darkness through participation in the new covenant made by Israel’s Messiah and King, ישוע בן־יוסף המשיח, whom us Scots called Iosa mac Eósaph, am Mesiah.

Eventually, Ss. Ninian, Columba, Brigid, Patrick and others including John Ogilvie, fought paganism with the power of the Gospel. Unfortunately, our liturgies were Romanized in Scotland by St. Margaret. On into the reformation our liturgies and spirituality were utterly broadly European and our Celtic spirituality was lost.

Luther’s schism allowed the Enlightenment, which gave us evolution and modernism that wanted to bury religion as Christendom collapsed. The seeds of unbelief and skepticism were planted and papal encyclicals couldn’t stop it. In response to the death of God in the West, paganism resurfaced with new Norse, Druid, Wiccan and Saxon mythologies capturing the minds of Celtic people all over again.

I searched for prayerbooks with Celtic flare, among which there were no Catholic influences. The Catholic trustworthy prayerbooks (not watered down by modernist tripe) were tied to the Mass of Pius V and the spirituality surrounding it. The “Celtic” aids to prayer were just paganism with frothy cosmic Jesus-speak, as if Chardin penned them himself.

I wanted the force and power of Catholic tradition that reflected Celtic culture, worldview and language. I wanted my family to have in their hands, the faith they could trust on their journey to the High Countries, in a time of rampant apostasy. So in the absence of such sensitivities, I had to edit my own.

After being rejected by many Catholic publishers due to the narrow audience and Celtic flare, I found perchance Cruachan Press, owned by Phil Campbell. What’s providential in all this is the following:

• I stumbled across his RCIA material years ago. I am the DRE at my parish. I was unhappy with the typical diocesan fluff from Catholic publishers that dropped Aquinas decades ago and are powerless to prevent the gaping flood causing empty pews. Phil was in the same boat and wrote his own curriculum and offered it for FREE on his blog. I jumped on it and doctored it up and made it my own.

• After the aforesaid providential meeting, I realized we had been using his RC History texts for homeschooling and were very impressed with it. That added cement.

• Revisiting Phil’s blog is how I discovered Cruachan Press and it’s vision for Celtic Catholicism. I called and proposed my prayerbook – the rest is history.

Even My bishop (emeritus) Robert Guglielmone of Charleston, SC granted the Nihil Obstat. What makes this endeavor an even greater blessing, is one of my hero bishops, His Excellency Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan wrote the foreword affirming this vision:

"With the St. John Ogilvie Praerybook, Dr. Joseph Johnson has created a masterpiece of a synthesis of Catholic doctrine, Catholic prayer and Catholic spirituality against the background of the authentic Celtic Catholic tradition. The Catholic Celtic tradition is a shining example how the Catholic Faith transforms and purifies the natural cultural richness of peoples and elevates it to be an efficient instrument of proclaiming and living the Catholic Faith.

I very much recommend the St. John Ogilvie Praerybook. May it be a great help to many Catholics, and especially to the Scottish Catholics of our day, so that the power of Faith and of prayer will protect and transform their lives. At the end of the time all the nations will bring their specific gifts into the New Jerusalem: “There will be brought the glory and honor of the nations into it.” (Rev. 21:26)