Also called Brown Scapular, Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Carmelite scapular, scapular medal
Two small squares of brown cloth joined by cords and worn over the shoulders, a Catholic sacramental that signals a person has entrusted themselves to Mary as Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It is a sign of faith and a commitment to Christian living, not a charm that works on its own.
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Take care: This is a living Catholic sacramental. Receive it through a parish rather than imitating the rite, and do not sell or advertise it as a guaranteed charm. Take it off for MRI scans and similar medical procedures if you use the metal medal.
Since 1910 the Church has allowed a blessed metal medal to stand in for the cloth scapular, provided the wearer has first been enrolled in the cloth one. The medal shows the Sacred Heart of Jesus on one side and Mary on the other. It is popular with soldiers, athletes and anyone for whom cloth is impractical.
A bull attributed to Pope John XXII in 1322 promised that Mary would free scapular wearers from purgatory on the first Saturday after death, under conditions such as chastity and daily prayers. Historians regard the bull as spurious, and the Holy See restricted how the privilege could be preached as early as 1613. Carmelites today do not promote it, which shows the Church itself correcting magical readings of the devotion.
The small lay scapular is a reduced form of the long apron-like scapular that Carmelite friars and nuns wear as part of their habit. The Vatican's 2001 Directory on Popular Piety describes the lay version as an outward sign of a filial bond with Mary and warns against treating it superstitiously.
The scapular began as a work apron worn by monks over their habits. Carmelite tradition holds that on July 16, 1251, Mary appeared to Simon Stock, an English prior general of the order, and gave him the scapular with a promise that whoever died wearing it would not suffer eternal fire. Historians note that this vision first appears in writing roughly 150 years later and is missing from the earliest accounts of Simon Stock's life, so they treat it as a pious tradition rather than a documented event.
In the 16th century prior general Giovanni Battista Rossi promoted a small form of the scapular for lay people, and confraternities spread it across Catholic Europe and later the Americas. In 1910 the Church allowed a blessed medal in its place. The Vatican's Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001) calls it a sign of the bond between Mary and the faithful, and says it must be accompanied by prayer and Christian living, never treated as a kind of insurance.
A disc of blessed wax stamped with the Lamb of God, historically consecrated by the pope and kept by Catholics as a sacramental of protection, especially against storms, fire and the dangers of childbirth. The name also belongs to the Lamb of God prayer of the Mass, which these discs illustrate.
Christian protection from evil has long been sought through short prayers to one's guardian angel and to the Archangel Michael, and through older breastplate prayers that wrap the speaker in God's protection.
A Catholic sacramental medal showing Saint Benedict on one side and a cross ringed with Latin initials on the other, worn or hung in homes as a prayer for protection against evil and temptation.
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