False Miraculous Medals?

[Clare]

Has anyone heard about false Miraculous Medals doing the rounds? 

The stars are arranged differently, and the M is different too.

There's this French page about them on Gloria TV. My French is very basic, so I could only work out some of it. But one bit I understood was "the star... symbolises the morning star, which is a symbol of Lucifer". Well, it's also a name for Our Lady in the Litany of Loreto!

Is the design satanic, or is it just false and not a "valid" medal? Or does it not really matter?

[Daniel]

I hope not, because the Miraculous Medal that I wear has the stars in that position and the backwards "M".

That part about the morning star is most likely nonsense.  I fail to see how changing the positioning of the stars somehow changes the central one into the "morning star".  And even if it somehow did become the morning star, that doesn't mean it's a symbol of Lucifer.  The morning star could symbolize Lucifer, or it could symbolize Christ (Apocalypse 22:16) or Our Lady (as you pointed out).

[Frater]

One priest gave me a very tiny miraculous medal once. The stars are all right, but the hearts are like those of the false medal, though not quite. I believe this is due to poor quality of manufacturing, not malicious satanists.

But given the rise of satanism (remember the recent hideous case of hosts being stolen in Ars) I would be careful with religious articles.

[Clare]

Is it important that the design of medals (and anything else like that) doesn't depart from the original, or they won't work?

Or is that superstitious?

And, if it is important and isn't superstitious, how should I explain to an enquirer why it isn't? I've often wondered about how to explain that Catholic practices which might look superstitious really aren't.

[Kaesekopf]

I think the story goes that Mary gave the design for the medal, so I'm not sure why one would want to deviate from it.

That said, just don't buy cheap medals.  That's probably a way around this.

[Daniel]

I think the story goes that Mary gave the design for the medal, so I'm not sure why one would want to deviate from it.

That said, just don't buy cheap medals.  That's probably a way around this.

Yes, but the design was given through a vision.  The design on the medal is an artist's re-creation of the design, not an exact copy of it.  Something like the placement of the stars probably isn't too important unless Our Lady specified how the stars were to be placed (which I don't think is the case).

[verenaerin]

Actually, she designed the medal, as KK said. Before the medals were created they decided to change somethings to make if "clearer" for the wearers. Our Lady reappeared and told them not to, and to design it the way she requested. So I think it's important.

[Archer]

Remember a while back we had a topic about how few Crucifixes (I think predominantly the ones on plastic Rosaries) had Jesus' head inclined to the left? If I recall correctly, similar to the OP the claim was that these Rosaries were Satanic. I talked to a very good SSPX Priest about it over Christmas and he wasn't phased. The gist of what he said was that if you're really concerned than you could get rid of them. He had never heard the claim before but he doubts the validity and said that we definitely have bigger things to worry about.

Do what you must so you can sleep at night, but I think things like this become a kind of boogeyman for trads.

[LausTibiChriste]

I bought a Miraculous Medal the other day and it doesn't even have a back, so I guess that's even worse eh?

[OSB Melitensis]

Let's not verge on superstition although it's true that Satanism is on the rise and subtlety is a useful tool for evil minds.

[Prayerful]

I guess there's a certain number of blundered medals, but a lot still is made is Italy, so they should be right.

[Daniel]

It could just be that they're cheap and poorly made.  Some of my medals have misspellings on them, e.g. the miraculous medal centerpiece on my rosary says "tee" instead of "thee" and the medal on my St. Michael chaplet spells "Michael" as "Micheal".  I don't really understand how something like that could happen, but it does happen.

[Elizabeth]

It does matter that the sacramentals are not cheap imitations, or mistaken.

[Archer]

It does matter that the sacramentals are not cheap imitations, or mistaken.

No arguments there. But cheap does not equal satanic. 

[Prayerful]

What's worse than cheap is finding a good beads is disfigured by Pope VI's demonic vaguely Jansenist looking (tho NO is the opposite of Jansenism) bent (like Pope Paul VI) cross.