T
TK421
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“Young Goodman Brown” is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 19th century. The story takes places in the setting of 17th century Puritan New England. A guy named Young Goodman Brown witnesses several different encounters in the forest outside of Salem, where we sees different townsfolk that he knows bartering deals with the devil, including his own wife. At the end of witnessing all of the different encounters, he ultimately ends up as a reclusive, fearful, paranoid man that spends the rest of his life seeing evil everywhere he looks. His trust in people is lost, as is, apparently, his courage to be able to live in the world.
In recent months, this is a story I have reflected on, as I’m starting to see what afflicted Young Goodman Brown happening to myself. Having experienced fundamentalism in my youth, then moving directly into agnosticism/atheism, then into a disorganized theism, then into into a C.S. Lewis-style protestantism, and now moving into Catholicism, I’ve viscerally experienced the world through the lens of quite a few different worldviews. One of the sobering things I’ve experienced moving into Catholicism is that my internal joy has rocketed, but my exterior hope has begun to diminish. As a protestant, I generally had the attitude that Catholics were saved. Now moving into Catholicism, I no longer have as much of a likewise attitude towards protestantism. I realize a good many Catholics are optimistic about this - even moreso than protestants on average - but these are private opinions and not dogma. The former Pope Benedict XVI believes - as a private theologian - that only a small minority of the entire world end up condemned. I think he’s wrong, and so do the majority of canonized saints and Doctors in history. I don’t want to think that he’s wrong, but I do.
As part of my diminished hope in mankind, I’ve find myself struggling with shrinking into a hole, like a person waiting for a bombing raid to pass by. It’s like now that my theological view has expanded into in line with Magisterial teaching, I can see evil easier than ever before in my life, and I risk falling into a line of thinking that people are hopelessly blind and there’s nothing I can do to make them “get it”. I know for a fact that this is morally not the kind of attitude or lifestyle that Christ commanded. Has anybody here in the past conquered this “Young Goodman Brown” mentality of seeing evil everywhere they look?
In recent months, this is a story I have reflected on, as I’m starting to see what afflicted Young Goodman Brown happening to myself. Having experienced fundamentalism in my youth, then moving directly into agnosticism/atheism, then into a disorganized theism, then into into a C.S. Lewis-style protestantism, and now moving into Catholicism, I’ve viscerally experienced the world through the lens of quite a few different worldviews. One of the sobering things I’ve experienced moving into Catholicism is that my internal joy has rocketed, but my exterior hope has begun to diminish. As a protestant, I generally had the attitude that Catholics were saved. Now moving into Catholicism, I no longer have as much of a likewise attitude towards protestantism. I realize a good many Catholics are optimistic about this - even moreso than protestants on average - but these are private opinions and not dogma. The former Pope Benedict XVI believes - as a private theologian - that only a small minority of the entire world end up condemned. I think he’s wrong, and so do the majority of canonized saints and Doctors in history. I don’t want to think that he’s wrong, but I do.
As part of my diminished hope in mankind, I’ve find myself struggling with shrinking into a hole, like a person waiting for a bombing raid to pass by. It’s like now that my theological view has expanded into in line with Magisterial teaching, I can see evil easier than ever before in my life, and I risk falling into a line of thinking that people are hopelessly blind and there’s nothing I can do to make them “get it”. I know for a fact that this is morally not the kind of attitude or lifestyle that Christ commanded. Has anybody here in the past conquered this “Young Goodman Brown” mentality of seeing evil everywhere they look?