Wearing Catholic medals w/ baptismal cross

[username!]

start a new thread if you want to discuss this futher.  this thread is about the op asking about wearing his grandmother's medal. --username Section moderator.

[username!]

I'll probably wear it regardless (mwahaha,) but I wonder if it's that un Orthodox?  Despite the fact that it's a RC devotion, what's wrong with an Orthodox Christian wearing it?

The inscription is: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee".  Since I've read numerous times here that everyone is conceived without sin that shouldn't be a problem.  More problematic is the image: no Christ, no three stars of ever-virginity, Sacred and Immaculate Hearts portrayed.

Honestly though you don't know by now some posters will say its ok to keep but not wear and some will advise getting rid of it so you don't get Catholic cooties?

Many of my friends wear a St. Christopher medal but yet they are non-church attending protestants.  I have never seen any of them melt, burn up or receive the plague from doing so.

[choy]

To reinterpret the IC in Orthodox terms, Mary was sanctified and grace-filled by God from the moment of her conception.  I don't see how that is against Orthodox belief.

I'm afraid you're wrong on this, choy. The hymnography of the Orthodox feast of the Conception of the Mother of God by St Anna makes absolutely no mention of an "immaculate conception". Where the Church is explicit on when the Mother of God was fully graced and sanctified is at the Annunciation.

But it is not heretical to think that she was grace filled from conception.  In fact, doesn't the Feast of the Entrance point to the fact that she was grace filled at that age (which is 2 or 3, I forgot).

The hymns anticipate the fullness of grace that the Mother of God is to receive at the Annunciation. Example:

The blessed Anna cried out, rejoicing: “Zachariah, take her whom the prophets of God proclaimed in the Spirit, and lead her into the holy temple to be brought up in reverence, that she may become the divine throne of the Master of all: His palace, His resting-place, and His dwelling filled with light.”

I don't see how that points to the Annunciation.  I don't think we need to be defensive about this for fear of insinuating we are accepting the IC.  The IC really revolves around the Latin understanding of Original Sin, which is not found in Orthodox theology.  So accepting that the Theotokos is grace filled from conception isn't accepting the Latin dogma of the IC, we have to believe in Original Sin first and then believe that the Theotokos was "excused" from OS before you can even qualify it as IC.

[username!]

Since obviously no one read my statement and the continuance of the discussion of the immaculate conception I am locking the thread.  Find one of the many immaculate conception threads and continue this discussion there.  The op had indicated that the medal jingled when worn with the cross so op put said medal on op's icon corner.  Thank you -username! section moderator.

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