Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel - Promises of The Scapular

Promises of The Scapular

The earliest form of the Scapular promise states simply that wearers of the brown scapular, the Carmelite habit, will be saved. In the first place this meant Carmelite religious who remained faithful to their vocation. Later the small Brown Scapular became popular with the laity as a sacramental.

The nature of the spiritual help associated with the Brown Scapular came to be described in greater detail and specificity. A traditional formulation of the Scapular Promise is "Take this Scapular. Whosoever dies wearing it shall not suffer eternal fire. It shall be a sign of salvation, a protection in danger and pledge of peace."

At times the scapular has been preached as an easy way to heaven, which has led to criticism of the devotion. Devotees of the Brown Scapular have sometimes been accused of straying into superstition. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that sacramentals such as the Brown Scapular "do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church's prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it."

Believers in the traditional scapular promise sometimes argue that Mary's intercession either grants conversion, final perseverance, and/or last rites to the wearer, to secure the assurances of the Scapular Promise. Possibly another argument is that the scapular is despised by faithless and godless souls, rejecting the Virgin's promise, and so they come nowhere near to wearing it. Another argument is that in cases of stubborn unrepentant sinners the scapular will somehow, miraculously or not, be taken off the wearer, this was suggested by Saint Claude de la Colombière.

The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia states that a list of indulgences, privileges, and indults of the Scapular Confraternity of Mount Carmel was approved on July 4, 1908, by the Congregation of Indulgences.