INTERMISSION: GET OUT OF HELL FREE

As is our yearly tradition, my son and I dropped by the Georgia Renaissance Festival this weekend. It’s just like the real Renaissance, except without all the chamber pots and cesspits and with a whole lot more elves, pirates, and  bad English accents. Oh, and one Deadpool.

While there, we took in the Hey Nunnie Nunnie show again which, like most Renn Fest acts, doesn’t really change that much from year to year, but is still funny anyway. The main difference this time around is that after the show I picked up this little item…

Now, because I wear a scapular every day, there are some who would say this is redundant. After all, there’s a fairly well known folk belief which came into existence near the end of the Renaissance which states that anyone adorned with a Brown Scapular will never go to Hell and only have to spend a minimal amount of time in Purgatory. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way. As Michael P. Carroll notes in his book Catholic Cults and Devotions: A Psychological Inquiry…

“It is important to note that that a belief in the ‘Scapular Promise’… has not been actively encouraged by the Church… [Rather] the Church has traditionally argued only that if people adhere to the Catholic faith and wear the Brown Scapular as evidence of their veneration of Mary and their recognition of Mary’s great ability to intercede on behalf of human beings, they may securely hope that Mary will procure for them ‘the necessary graces for… perseverance in good.’ In other words, by wearing the Brown Scapular and venerating Mary, Mary will help you to avoid sin and so, by extension, avoid Hell.”

So, the Brown Scapular isn’t really a get out of Hell free card. That’s okay though, because now I have a back-up which I nabbed for only five bucks. As the price of indulgences went during Renaissance times, that’s a bargain.