How does a Mt. Carmel scapular save us?

[lil_t_rex01]

Does it still save you from hell if you wear it in the pocket of your jeans? That’s how I do it. Or does it have to be around your neck?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I believe you are referring to the brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. A small scapular worn by a layman is intended to be a reminder of the large scapular garment worn by religious men and women over their shoulders, draping over the front and back of the body. That means a small scapular should be worn around the neck.

That said, it sounds like you may be viewing the ancient promise attached to the brown scapular, that its wearers would not go to hell, in a far too superstitious manner. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines superstition this way:

Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition (CCC 2111).

The very act of wearing a scapular, including a brown scapular, saves no one. A person is saved by God and by his dispositions toward God at the time of death. Grace may be given through material objects, and the devout wearing of certain religious objects may orient a person’s disposition toward ultimate salvation, but the mere act of wearing a certain religious object without the necessary dispositions is superstitious.