Posted on 05/09/2015 7:44:31 AM PDT by RnMomof7
Millions of sincere Catholics wear the brown scapular thinking by doing so it will help them spiritually. They believed the report that Mary made and is backing a salvation promise in connection with the brown scapular hundreds of years ago based on their religious traditions. Over the years wearing the brown scapular has been perpetuated by sincere Catholic leaders, such as the one in this video, but it is in complete futility that it is worn. It is a false hope and a spiritual snare. 
It is not based on God’s truth and is, therefore, just as deadly for the sincere Catholic as it is for the Hindu who bathes in the Ganges River thinking his sins will be washed away in the water or for the Muslim who kisses the black stone of Kaaba to be forgiven! [The picture to the right is Mel Gibson, the director of the Passion of Christ, wearing a brown scapular as he smokes.]
I too once wore the brown scapular as an Ex Roman Catholic. I know what it is like to be taught something and accept it as truth to find out later it is not only unscriptural, but anti-scriptural. It hurts, but TRUTH is what we must stand on to be safe. It takes humility in such cases to turn.
NOTE: At about 2:23 time-wise into the video, the speaker is quoted below. How could anyone deny that Mary is deified in Catholicism? Surely, this rampant idolatry is grieving to the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father. This is what Catholicism teaches about the brown scapular:
And so, wearing of the brown scapular reminds us, should remind us, of three things. First, that we are children of Mary. Second of all, that we need to work for our Lady. And finally, it should be a garment of humility and penance. First, by the brown scapular we profess ourselves to be children of Mary. The scapular of our Lady is a badge or a uniform so to speak by which we profess to whom we belong and who we serve. Likewise, our Lady in turn by wearing the brown scapular, she recognizes us as her children, as her special children. And because of that, she consequently protects us and watches over us. The brown scapular should also remind us that we need to work for our Lady because the scapular, which means shoulder garment, was originally that, it was a garment worn by religious in order to protect their habit, their religious habit that they wore on a daily basis during those periods of work to keep it from getting dirty, stained, from ripping, etc. and so therefore the scapular is a working garb. And so this should remind us that there’s no room for lazy piety. If we wear the brown scapular and we consider ourselves our Lady’s children, there’s no place for lazy piety but rather we should fill our lives with good works. This brown scapular should remind us the need to faithfully fulfill our daily duties, and to make another adaptation of Scripture, to labor as good soldiers of the Immaculate. Finally, the third place, the brown scapular is also a garment of humility and of penance. So in a spirit of penance, we should accept all the difficulties of our state of life and all the sufferings that our Lady may want to send us. And the scapular will give us the strength to do this. In all of our difficulties, we can always grab onto our brown scapular, remind ourselves of our Lady’s protection, her watchfulness, her presence and especially at the moment of death, when we can call to mind our Lady’s promise of salvation. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.
* Not a single word about Jesus was mentioned there.
* The brown scapular is 100% religious mythology and idolatry, as Mary is deified as a type of Savior.
* No Bible light shines from such brown scapular Catholic tradition.
LOL. You must care since you replied. When I do not care, I just move on.
First, we have no injunction to remember Mary in this capacity.
Next, we do not have this recognition of Mary anywhere in the NT. It is drawn from allegory and is one of the worst forms of hermeneutics as it leads to false understandings as this one espoused by catholicism.
No.
We will call her blessed as noted in Luke's text.....but none of the accolades that catholicism gives to her.
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“Moral” is man made.
We rightly divide the plain word of God from the ideas of men, which invariably produce false doctrine.
Interpreting the word of God means not accepting it at face value; changing some element of it to conform to the comfort of men.
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The birth of Jesus has to be considered the most important birth ever.
About the Immaculate Conception belief, Wikipedia says it first appeared centuries after Jesus’ earthly life, and it is clear that many Christians and Catholics in particular didn’t believe in it and Catholics didn’t have to, until it was made a required belief in the 19th Century. That creates a division from believers of different periods.
There is also no necessity for Mary to be sinless or immaculately conceived. Jesus (God) can’t sin or be made unclean by sin. Instead, being all-good, He can cleanse from sin! That only God can do. And Jesus laid His Godhead, and the perfect love and peace of the holiness of His Father’s presence, to come to this world as a mere man, to live alongside the moral filth of humanity. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who could know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) A holy being perfectly aware of sin in every form, even in disguise, surrounded by the ugly selfishness, bitterness towards God, perversity, pride, corruption, etc., of humanity - and in becoming human, He has chosen to hide His Godhead, while if He’d fully revealed Himself, He could have put an end to the sin around Him. But as He has told us, His first visit to earth He came in mercy, while in His next coming, He will come in judgment, and His Godhead will then be fully revealed. And, the Bible says, God loved even when we were opposed to Him, His enemies. Jesus comes into sinful, unclean hearts and cleanses them.
And, too, consider that if Jesus needed a sinless mother, then His mother would certainly need sinless parents by that logic - and so on, all the way back to Adam and Eve. That isn’t possible, and it would create a large group of people, so many with other descendents, too, who are sinless.
On deifying Mary, or worshipping her as a god, I wrote this to another poster here in this thread:
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Yes, the doctrine of your church says Catholics don’t worship Mary, so it is understandable how Catholics might believe they aren’t doing that, but words and deeds can be two different things. And, when we are talking about deeds that are more physical, like getting in water, or eating something, it’s a lot easier for everyone to tell if the deed is done or not. Worship, though, is in many ways not so physical.
Now, would you think it proper to call any other human than Mary, “our life, our sweetness, and our hope”? Why or why not? We who are born-again, evangelical Christians call Jesus “our life,” “our sweetness,” and “our hope,” and won’t call anyone else that.
Consider, too, that we know the Bible, and that from its beginning to its end, it speaks in the strongest terms of giving our worship only to God, and the New Testament writers wrote comprehensively about faith and the church and exalted only God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).
The New Testament writers also deliberately, by guidance of the Holy Spirit, avoided almost all reference to Jesus’ human family, Mary included, as a lot of other information (like about Jesus’ earlier life and appearance) was also left out. If the Christian faith was to be so much about Mary, then the Church could have recorded and preserved something about the rest of her life.
What troubles evangelicals is that so many of the very things we do as worship of God, including how we behold Him, Catholics do towards Mary. And we are not creating our own idea of what worship is, but going by what God Himself has revealed in His Word.
www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3287986/posts?page=343#343
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So, we believe in giving 100% of our worship to the triune God, including calling Him “our life,” “our sweetness,” and “our hope.” We can see no basis for turning our attention that’s wholly on God from Him to a creature, and for starting to divide our attention between them, calling on her sometimes (instead of who we have always called on, God) as “our life, our sweetness, and our hope,” too.
No we are born in sin ... to deny that is heretical
Mary is not the ark.. just one more foolish teaching of some catholics..
I don’t agree with the Bible not needing to be interpreted, but I do believe in fundamentalism in reading it. That has nothing to do with Islam or any other religion, as they are false beliefs with false gods. And there are plenty of more than sufficient answers for all the alleged problems you mention, like the “conflicts,” the versions, etc. I’ve studied the Bible and those very “problems” for years. There are also plenty of good sources on apologetics on the internet, so there’s no need for me to spend the time going over them. They each can be looked up.
” What if that bit about scripture is to be read, rather than interpreted, was added by a doctrinaire cleric hundreds of years after Christ, who was in tiff arguing with someone over meaning, and wanted to shut down debate?”
There are so many whole and partial copies of the New Testament texts from the earliest years which are consistent with each other that that scenario wouldn’t happen. And if it were possible, there is so much of the Bible that we have that something out of character with it would be rejected.
“It is a circular argument to say that you must accept the absolute authority of a document, based on the document itself.”
But not when it’s God’s Word.
Finally, after 372 posts, we have a RC attempt to answer the brown scapular-talisman issue.
I commend you for trying, but, really, “because they told me it was not a talisman” is a very poor answer. Please, how about something from the NT that vindicates the wearing of brown scapulars.
“They told me...”, the Supreme Court is going to tell us that same sex marriage is not an abomination, are you going to believe them?
Why do we think Mary was sinful? Because she was human and for Jesus to share fully in our humanity, He had to live as a human from conception to death, and that includes living in an imperfect family with imperfect parents.
It would be no big deal to live in a home with perfect parents.
Jesus was tempted in every way, just as we are and was without sin.
He could not have been tempted in every way as we are if God sheltered Him and protected Him form the results of the fall by orchestrating His circumstances to protect Him from what we all endure.
Mary is NOT the ark. That would be Jesus, His body containing the second person of the Trinity.
She did NOT need to be perfect and nobody is disrespecting her by stating the truth about her. And that truth is found in Scripture, not in the vain imaginings and fantasies about her concocted by sin cursed men.
This thread is not blasphemous.
Blasphemy is against God.
Mary is not God so it is impossible to blaspheme her.
It isn’t blasphemy just because someone disagrees with Catholicism.
She is one with god in their estimation..
What I’ve observed is that there’s two reasons why people want to *interpret* the Bible.
One is to justify false doctrine, to claim and explain away how Scripture doesn’t say what it says. It says what the interpreter says it means.
The other is to justify sin. We see that effort very clearly in the homosexual movement, where they are bending over backwards to excuse their sin, that God CLEARLY calls sin.
Sure there are some passages in Scripture that are confusing or ambiguous, but the vast majority of it is not and is to be OBEYED, not “interpreted.”
What a slam at the management.
They are doing a fantastic job at running the religion forum. Just because Catholics aren't favored doesn't mean they are doing a poor job. I think the RM is one of the most even handed, unbiased mods around and I say that having been chastised myself (deservedly so) often enough.
I don't see the point in praying for what already exists and that is also a not so subtle dig at them stating that they are NOT doing the job of running the RF in a way that is pleasing to God.
Perhaps your prayers would be better offered that people would manage their own words and behavior better instead of expecting an outside source to control them. People need to quit whining about bias and running crying to the mod over the least little perceived slight, and exercise a little self-control with their language and opinions.
I'm sure the RM is sick of hearing people whine the equivalent of *MOMMMMYYYYY, he's LOOKING at me!!!!! Make him stop."
The RM is not an instrument of control over others who disagree with you or Catholics and I appreciate and applaud him for not letting himself be used as such.
If Catholics don't like my opinions about Catholicism, that's too bad. I am free to express them exactly as Catholics are free to express their opinions about non-Catholics and other religions.
RM, thanks for the even handedness and if I've ever added to your burden of managing this forum, forgive me.
This is very true. If we look at Jesus, everything about Him was humble. He was born in a manger, rather than an inn or mansion or castle. On palm Sunday, He entered the town riding on a donkey and colt, rather than a magnificent war horse.
It makes no sense that He would be humble about everything except His choice of mother. Why would Jesus choose the most wonderful thing in all creation for His mother?
Mary was a godly woman. God called and she answered.
With Jesus, He knows me, loves me, and hear my prayers. I have these promises in scripture.
With Mary, I have no reason to know that she knows me, loves me, or hears by prayer. There is no scripture, early church father, or infallible teaching that states any of this. If I'm wrong, please post a reference. Otherwise, I'm not going to waste my time with fiction and a promise I have no reason to believe.
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