No it is not true. The decision can be simply based on your personal preference.
Here is a helpful extract from the article from the old edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia.
The entire article is a good overview of the topic of scapulars.
Since 1910 and the regulation of the Holy Office of 16 December of that year (Acta Apost. Sedis, III, 22 sq.) it is permitted to wear, instead of one or more of the small scapulars a single medal of metal. This medal must have on one side a representation of Jesus Christ with His Most Sacred Heart and on the other an image of the Mother of God. All persons who have been validly invested with a blessed woollen scapular may replace such by this medal.
The medal must be blessed by a priest possessing the faculty to bless and invest with the scapular or scapulars which the medal is to replace. The faculties to bless these medals are subject to the same conditions and limitations as the faculties to bless and invest with the corresponding scapulars. If the medal is to be worn instead of a number of different scapulars, it must receive the blessing that would be attached to each of them, i.e. as many blessings as the number of scapulars it replaces. For each blessing a sign of the Cross suffices. This medal must also be worn constantly, either about the neck or in some other seemly manner, and with it may be attained all the indulgences and privileges of the small scapulars without exception. Only the small (not the large) scapulars may be validly replaced by such medals.
newadvent.org/cathen/13508b.htm
There are a few additions to make as the article is 100 years old.
- Reserved blessings regarding scapulars and other sacramentals was abrogated by Blessed Paul VI when he revised the Roman Ritual…thus any priest or deacon today has the faculty to bless and invest with any of the scapulars.
- For the substitution, you must have been invested in the scapular and then the medal you use needs to be blessed once for each scapular you are using it in substitution. For a blessing of the medal, it still suffices for the cleric to simply make the sign of the cross over the medal.
- The reference to the large scapulars for which the medal may not substitute refers to the scapulars for tertiaries. Members of Third Orders Secular would have recourse either to their local superior or the ecclesiastical assistant…although, today, the provisions are already incorporated into their rule/constitutions since the Council.
- Cloth scapulars no longer have to be made of wool.
You are completely misinformed and are misinforming others.
It was Pope Saint Pius X who made this disposition in 1910…four years before World War I. Pope Saint Pius X died on the eve of World War I.
The motivation of the pope was actually derived from tropical situations because, at the time, the scapular had to be made of wool, which could become infested. That provision has since changed and synthetic fabric maybe used…but the disposition was not limited. The motivation was not war related.
The scapular medal provision is applicable to anyone. There are no essential conditions for substituting it for one or more cloth scapulars. You may resort to the
AAS to read the actual decree…it is cited above.
Unfortunately there are rigorists who try to argue that Saint Pius X was wrong to make this change…just as there are those who argue that Saint John Paul II was wrong to alter the rosary. In point of fact, the Church has the power to create, to alter and to suppress sacramentals.
An American confrere in the priesthood, Father Stephen Breen, wrote what is probably the definitive popular work in English on the scapulars of the Church – Treasure Wrapped in Cloth. It is an excellent treatment of the topic. I have to search my memory but I believe it was published in the 1950s.
