“Young Goodman Brown”, Goody Cloyse and the catechetical ministryThis essay intends to compare the author's denigrating insult towards Goody Cloyse, Puritan catechism teacher, of the Deacon Gookin and the minister - all of them catechists - in "Young Goodman Brown", with "In Support of Catechetical Ministry - A Statement of the US Catholic Bishops" of June 2000. The influence of religion, culture and education Puritanism is a common subject in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Growing up, Hawthorne could not escape the influence of Puritan society, not only residing with his father's devout Puritan family as a child, but also through studying his own family history. The first of his ancestors, William Hathorne, is described in Hawthorne's "The Custom House" as arriving with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 "with his Bible and his sword" (26). A further connection can also be seen in his most important ancestor John Hathorne, who exemplified the level of zeal of Puritanism with his role as a persecutor in the Salem witch trials. The study of his own family from the founding of the Bay Colony to the Second Great Awakening of his time parallels the issues raised in "Young Goodman Brown." By examining the history of early Puritan society, Hawthorne is able to discuss the merits and consequences of such zeal, particularly John Cotton's Puritan Catechism and the repercussions of the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne places "Young Goodman Brown" in a context of puritanical rigidity and insecurity to allow his contemporary readers to see the consequences of such a belief system. Hawthorne's tale places the newlywed Puritan Brown in a situation where he agrees with an evil character to participate in a coven, a witches' ceremony, a devil-worship liturgy. The experience he has in this liturgy translates easily into the dream allegory of Hawthorne's work and allows the author to use Puritan doctrine and the Salem story to discuss the merits and consequences of belief in the total moral depravity of man. As Benjamin Franklin V states in “Goodman Brown and the Puritan Catechism,” Hawthorne used John Cotton's Milk for Babes as Goodman Brown's educational source. It was the Puritan belief that man should be educated to realize his own depravity, and so education began in childhood. The child was taught that he was “conceived in sin and born in iniquity”.” (70).