Rorate Caeli

Explanation of the Brown Scapular -- and the Sabbatine Privilege

Graphic courtesy the Order of Carmelites
There is almost no other topic on which we post that elicits more hate mail then when we write about the Sabbatine Privilege: the hundreds-of-years-old tradition that was approved by numerous popes and grants that anyone who wears, is enrolled in and who fulfills the daily obligations of the Brown Scapular will be consoled by Our Lady and taken to Heaven out of Purgatory on the first Saturday after his death (simply wearing the Brown Scapular is not enough to receive the Privilege).

We get hate mail from modernist laymen, priests and even some Carmelites as well. It's as if the demons do everything they can to stir these liberals into a frenzy whenever our fingers tap the keyboard to post on the Privilege. 

Yet, we know it's true: 

A Pope granted it and Popes have ratified it: John XXII, Alexander V, Nicholas V, Sixtus, IV, Clement VII, Paul Ill, Saint Pius V, Clement VIII, Leo XI, Paul V, Urban VIII, Alexander VII, Benedict XIV, Pius VI, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI. [Of the nine Popes who have sanctioned the Sabbatine Privilege, note these words of St. Pius V (Superna dispositione... Feb. 18, 1566): “With apostolic authority and by tenor of the present, we approve each of the privileges [of the Carmelite Order] and also the Sabbatine.”]


And let the hate mail commence ...