Scapular Confraternity

Confraternitas Beatissimae Virginis Mariae 
de Monte Carmelo

Confraternity of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel

The Confraternity of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, more popularly known as the Scapular Confraternity, is the legion of Roman Catholics (clerics, religious, and lay) who have been imposed upon with the Brown Scapular (the habit or garb of a Carmelite religious) in its miniature form. Thus, they place themselves under the holy habit and cope of the glorious Immaculate Mother and “Queen Beauty of Carmel” (Regina Decor Carmeli). They, therefore, entrust their eternal salvation to the promised Woman who shall crush [the] head of Satan (Gen. 3.15, following the traditional Douay-Rheims Version of the Holy Scriptures chiefly based on St. Jerome’s Sacred Latin Vulgate Bible – the official Latin translation of the Holy Catholic Church) and who, in Her apparition of July 16, 1251 to St. Simon Stock, then General of Her Carmelite Order, made this well-known great Scapular promise: “Receive, my beloved son, this habit of thy Order: this shall be to thee and to all Carmelites a privilege, that whosoever dies clothed in this shall never suffer eternal fire.”

Membership

The mere passive wearing of the Brown Scapular of Our Immaculate Mother of Carmel does not suffice to guarantee a solid claim on the great Scapular promise of Our Blessed Mother: deliverance from the eternal fires of Hell. The holy Carmelite Scapular is not a sort of talisman or charm supposed to grant a kind of automatic protection and deliverance. Moreover, this Badge of Carmel – a Catholic sacramental – and the promise attached to it by Our Blessed Mother does not offer automatic salvation.

To prove the above point, how is it possible that many Catholics there are who wear this Badge of Christian Victory and Salvation but, if only they would reflect on their attitudes, reactions and utterances, actually lead their everyday lives according to the mentality of those won over to Satan (breathing in and out those principles and maxims carried by the “diabolical orientation” referred to by Our Lady of Fatima)? This ungodly mentality or “spirit” moves them therefore to conform to that trend of fashion and lifestyle of “civilized”, “independent”, and “freethinking” people who reject the dominion (Ps 21.29; 22.28 in modern versions) of Jesus Christ and His Church. They wear the Scapular but they are not identified among God’s few elect – His remnant (Rom. 11.1-5) – whom He seals with these words: The Lord thy God hath chosen thee, to be His peculiar people of all peoples that are upon earth (Deut. 7.6), not conformed to this world (Rom. 12.2).

Requirements for membership in this Holy Confraternity of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel as have been traditionally laid down by the Church:

1. woolen cloth Scapular of Carmel with no encasing whatsoever and does not need images if there are none; NB: the medal, which most Catholics wear, does not carry an indulgence and does not guarantee the Sabbatine privilege (protection after death: Our Blessed Mother coming to the deliverance of the soul in Purgatory on the Saturday immediately following his death) and may be worn only by those who have sensitive skin that quickly exhibits irritation when touched by the material of the cloth Scapular;

2. investiture of the woolen cloth Scapular by legitimate Roman Catholic priests ordained according to the Traditional Rite (the doubtful validity of priestly ordination is a grave problem of the Ecumenical ‘Catholic’ priests of Vatican II’s Novus Ordo or “New ‘Catholic Order’”, including the Novus Ordo Carmelites: Calced and Discalced; beware of Sedevacantist priests, see our posts "On the Sedevacantist Position: A Reply," I and II) and who have the faculty to enroll and transmit the names of the recipients to the Confraternity;

3. “…Fulfill the conditions of the Sabbatine Privilege” (Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to Ven. Dominic of Jesus and Mary):

a. observe chastity according to one’s state of life

b. (i) recitation of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Officium Parvum) or, (ii) if the recitation is impossible, the keeping of the traditional calendar of fasts of the Church together with abstinence from meat on Wednesdays and Saturdays. However, if one cannot observe even this condition, then (iii) any other work may be substituted by a priest-confessor, either inside or outside the confessional (Note carefully: only those priests, see no. 2 above, who have a special faculty to enroll in and transmit names to the Carmelite Confraternity, may commute the recitation of the Office to condition iii; all confessors can commute the recitation of the Office to condition ii.).


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Related posts: "The Rule of Our Lady and the Confraternity"