Did our Blessed Lady appear to Saint Simon Stock and give him the Brown Scapular?
The long-standing tradition of the Church has approved this vision as an acceptable cult but that does not authenticate it as a historical experience. In fact, one must be careful to speak of any vision as a historical experience in as that supernatural phenomena are a sort of intersection between time and eternity and as such have a unique relationship to history—which always is strictly limited to events that happen in time. The most one can say historically, for example, is that at such and such an hour on such and such a day this visionary had an experience of seeing this particular phenomenon. For example, one can say that on February 11, 1858, Bernadette Soubirous had an experience in which she perceived the Blessed Virgin standing in a grotto at Lourdes. One can speak historically of the living visionary—Bernadette—and what Bernadette experienced on that given day. It is more difficult to speak historically of the Blessed Virgin appearing because the Blessed Virgin no longer lives in a historical state, but lives in eternity. Since her dormition, Mary is beyond the realm of history. It is therefore not possible to speak historically of her apparations. One can, however, certainly speak of her apparitions when one speaks in the realm of faith or mystical experience. This is an important distinction because we do not want to reduce our religious experience to the realm of the historically verifiable. Religious experience brings us to those places in our experience where we can glimpse beyond the finite—something that history has no business doing. Religious experience puts us in, what years ago one professor of mine called "a time that is no time and a place that is no place." When we try to reduce our faith to the historical and verifiable we rob it of the eternal and transcendent. The question then, from a historical perspective, is not whether Mary appeared to Simon Stock and gave him the scapular, but rather did Simon Stock perceive the Mother of God bestowing this sign of her protection on him and his brothers in Carmel.
Well, after that long and metaphysical discourse, the answer still is "seemingly not." There are huge problems with the story of Simon Stock and the scapular. Father Richard Copsey, O.Carm. wrote an outstanding article, astonishingly erudite actually, for the Journal of Ecclesiastical History on this question. There are several problems. The first is the historicity of Simon himself. The second is the account of the vision.
There are few surviving documents from the 13th century that record the history of the Carmelite Order. There is an ancient tradition that is not without documentation—albeit a fourteenth century necrology that seems to depend on an older but now vanished text—that there was a thirteenth century Prior General named Simon. This is also borne out by other fourteenth century references. There is also a story—preserved in Dominican, not Carmelite sources, of a prior on Mount Carmel by the name of Simon who met Jordan of Saxony during his ill-fated voyage to the Holy Land. And there is a tomb of one Carmelite named Simon in the Cathedral of Bordeaux, a tomb that once stood in the Carmelite Church of that city, which in the Middle Ages drew many pilgrims. It is to this last that the stories of the vision seem to be originally attached. This Simon, incidentally, would have been English and not French as Bordeaux was for most of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the possession of the Kings of England and its religious houses populated by English religious. Simon the prior of Mount Carmel, Simon the thirteenth-century General of the Order, and Simon buried at Bordeaux may have all been one and the same person. But then again they may have been three individuals. Or two of the three could have been the same person. We simply do not know enough about any one of the three Simons to make a judgment. Nor is there any reason to connect Simon from Mount Carmel, or even Simon the Prior General, with the scapular vision. A late fourteenth century tradition makes some link between Simon buried in Bordeaux with the vision, but this first connection with this tradition to the Scapular vision is a century and a half after the purported event—a long time for a tradition to be continuous without written documentation to support it.
This bring us to the second problem, and that problem is the account of the vision. No one seems to know about the vision until the very end of the fourteenth century—almost a century and a half after it supposedly happened. This is extremely problematic in establishing historical accuracy. Some argue that perhaps the stories were passed down verbally and only come to be written at the close of the fourteenth century. But there are people who should have known about them—if they were historical—that have no knowledge of the vision at all. The most prominent of these is a Carmelite friar named John Hornby. At a debate at the University of Cambridge in 1375 Hornby, attacked the Dominican John Stokes, precisely over the claims the Dominicans made for having received their habit from the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to Hornby, the Carmelites, ardent supporters of Mary's Immaculate Conception, were far more worthy of Mary's attention than the Dominicans. The Dominicans followed the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas who denied the Immaculate Conception. Hornby says that if the Dominicans had received their habit from the Blessed Virgin, they show her little gratitude. They are, he insists "her greatest enemies" because of their denial of her Immaculate Conception. Hornby testified in his debate with Stokes to a Dominican custom of having a picture or statute of the Blessed Virgin bestowing the Dominican Scapular on the Friars Preacher in each of their houses. He never mentions any such custom concerning the Carmelite scapular vision. In fact, there are no known pictures of Mary bestowing the scapular on Carmelites from this period or earlier. Moreover Hornby seems totally ignorant of any legends concerning his fellow Englishman, Simon Stock, having received the scapular from the Blessed Virgin in the previous century. This despite the fact that he was a member of the same province—the English Province—of the Order as Simon Stock, and that he was at Cambridge, less than a hundred miles from Aylesford, the alleged site of the vision.
Hornby is not the only one who is unfamiliar with the vision. The two fourteenth century sources we have for a thirteenth-century General named Simon—the necrology of the Carmelites of Florence compiled by Giovanni Bartoli c. 1374 and the catalogue of Priors General of the Order compiled by John Grossi, Prior General of the Avignon Obedience c. 1390 mention a Prior General named Simon, but give no mention of the scapular or a Vision of the Blessed Virgin. All in all, it is not possible to say that the stories of Simon Stock receiving the Scapular from the Blessed Virgin Mary are any older than the end of the fourteenth century, a century and a half after the vision supposedly took place. This presents significant problems to the historian for the claims that a thirteenth century Carmelite claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary and received the scapular from her.
The story of the vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Pope John XXII at Avignon conferring the Sabbatine Privilege of her promise to deliver from purgatory on the Saturday following death the souls of any who died in the scapular has been shown by scholars to be based on an inauthentic papal bull forged in Sicily in the first half of the fifteenth century. Thus the Sabbatine Vision and Privilege too are without any historical foundation. Moreover, in 1603 a book containing the privileges of the Carmelite Order, including the Sabbatine privilege, was condemned by the Portuguese Inquisition. Six years later all books mentioning the Sabbatine privilege were put on the Index of Forbidden Books in Portugal. An appeal to Rome ended when the Roman authorities supported the Inquisition's ban. The Carmelites were forbidden to preach the Sabbatine privilege—a prohibition they did not always honor—although the faithful were to be allowed to believe, with certain conditions, "that the Blessed Virgin by her continuous intercession, merciful prayers, merits and special protection will assist the souls of deceased brothers and members of the confraternity (of the Scapular), especially on Saturday, the day which the church dedicates to the Blessed Virgin."
These visions then cannot be seen as historical events. That does not mean that they are without meaning. The belief in the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary over the Order of Carmel and its members is and has always been strong—from the first days of the Order. The scapular serves as a visible reminder of that protection despite its probable commonplace origins.
Well, what about the various statements of the Popes over the centuries about the scapular. Don't they prove the historicity of the vision?
Frankly, no. Over the years many popes have encouraged the wearing of the Brown Scapular. Some –such as Gregory XIII, Clement VII, Pope Saint Pius V, Pope Saint Pius X, and Pope John Paul II—have repeated the stories and legends concerning Saint Simon Stock or the Sabbatine Privilege. No one has ever claimed that these statements enjoy the privilege of infallibility. They do not meet the criterion which the First Vatican Council set down for papal statements to be infallible. The statements should be considered doctrinally sound, but that doesn't mean that they are historically accurate. Papal infallibility pertains to faith (doctrine) and morals, it does not extend to history or to the sciences. No Catholic would dispute that the scapular disposes its wearers to grace, including—hopefully—the grace of final perseverance, but we cannot say that Our Lady made any promises to Saint Simon Stock or to Pope John XXII regarding this sacramental.
Frankly, no. Over the years many popes have encouraged the wearing of the Brown Scapular. Some –such as Gregory XIII, Clement VII, Pope Saint Pius V, Pope Saint Pius X, and Pope John Paul II—have repeated the stories and legends concerning Saint Simon Stock or the Sabbatine Privilege. No one has ever claimed that these statements enjoy the privilege of infallibility. They do not meet the criterion which the First Vatican Council set down for papal statements to be infallible. The statements should be considered doctrinally sound, but that doesn't mean that they are historically accurate. Papal infallibility pertains to faith (doctrine) and morals, it does not extend to history or to the sciences. No Catholic would dispute that the scapular disposes its wearers to grace, including—hopefully—the grace of final perseverance, but we cannot say that Our Lady made any promises to Saint Simon Stock or to Pope John XXII regarding this sacramental.
From: A CATECHESIS ON THE BROWN SCAPULAR at http://carmelitanacollection.com/catechesis.php