"In the 1600s the Church of England instigated Mothering Sunday in recognition of Mary the mother of Jesus."*
Obviously a High Church measure, to compensate for Marian Feasts abolished by Reformers.
"Later this religious celebration was expanded to include honouring all mothers."*
Obviously a Low Church measure, to compensate for what they thought Mariolatrous in the original intention of this High Church measure.
Pious? No, not totally.
"The seed for the Mother’s Day that is widely celebrated today in countries across the globe had its beginning in 1858 with Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis, a Christian who was working to heal the nation before, during and after the US Civil War. Her strategy was to promote and elevate the important role of mothers and help them to create healthier and more hygienic homes.
From this she instigated a ‘Mother’s Friendship Day’ which eventually developed into a national movement called ‘Mother’s Friendship Clubs’. At these clubs Ann would teach the mothers basic nursing and safe sanitation practices to be used in the home."*
Hitler would certainly have approved of her. Chesterton might not have. Here is what he said in Three Enemies of the Family, enumerating Hitler (but not Dollfuss) as a third enemy of the family, along with Commies and Capitalists (like guys making money of overworking women and underpaying men so women need to work outside home, like guys making money of porn or "rubbers"):
"But there is, curiously enough, a third thing of the kind, which I am really inclined to think that I dislike even more than the other two. It is not the Communist attacking the family or the Capitalist betraying the family; it is the vast and very astonishing vision of the Hitlerite defending the family. Hitler's way of defending the independence of the family is to make every family dependent on him and his semi-Socialist State; and to preserve the authority of parents by authoritatively telling all the parents what to do. His notion of keeping sacred the dignity of domestic life is to issue peremptory orders that the grandfather is to get up at five in the morning and do dumb-bell exercises, or the grand mother to march twenty miles to a camp to procure a Swastika flag. In other words, he appears to interfere with family life more even than the Bolshevists do; and to do it in the name of the sacredness of the family."**
So, what happened after Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis' life, eventually (leaving you something to read on CMI if you are curious)? Back to original page quoted and then to some more history:
"On 9 May 1914*, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day and a national holiday."
"28 juin [1914]*** : assassinat à Sarajevo de l'archiduc François-Ferdinand, héritier du trône de l'Autriche-Hongrie et de sa femme Sophie par le nationaliste serbe de Bosnie-Herzégovine Gavrilo Princip, membre de la société secrète de la « Main noire »."
That was seven full weeks, neither more nor less, after Woodrow Wilson's deed.
Let us look a little closer on what happened next:
"19 mai [1914]*** : instruction obligatoire jusqu’à 14 ans en Belgique."
Ten days after Woodrow Wilson, 39 [Biblically speaking 40] days before the shot in Sarajevo.
"29 mai [1914]*** : le naufrage de l'Empress of Ireland dans l'estuaire du fleuve Saint-Laurent fait 1012 morts."
And that was ten days after school compulsion in Belgium being extended to age 14, thirty days before The Great War.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Sunday
11/V/2014
* CMI : Mother’s Day and the Christian connection
by Graham McDonald
Published: 11 May 2014 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/mothers-day
** From one of the several essays in The Well and the Shallows (1935):
G K Chesterton's Works Online : The Well And the Shallows
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Well_And_Shallows.txt
In another of them, he criticised the Buchmanites. He may not have been a saint, but if he was not, I do not think Fulton Sheen was either. Still less the guys who consider Fulton Sheen and Chesterton as being the same thing. Dufflepuds may make it to Heaven, possibly, but not to canonisable sainthood.
*** Wikipédie francophone : 1914
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1914
If you did not click the link above, I linked to:
Patrick Madrid is right about kecharitomene and blessed among women
From Purification of Our Lady, Candlemass 2014
http://greatbishopofgeneva.blogspot.com/2014/02/patrick-madrid-is-right-about.html
