And no Protestant should ever try to play holier than thou with a Catholic on the church's record on sexual morality. Even in my limited ecclesiastical experience, I've come across adultery, rape, and child abuse within orthodox Reformed circles, and seen attempts by church leaders to sweep the same under the carpet.I am accustomed to this sort of rhetoric in evangelical circles: "I have special knowledge, but no, I don't feel obligated to name names or do anything about it; I do, however, feel justified in casting aspersions." I don't know what to do about it generally: it's relatively easy to get people to talk about various horrors if they won't be held accountable for their comments, difficult if they face the possibility of e.g. being sued for slander.
If this were a simple matter of Trueman accusing some unnamed Protestant of adultery I'd be inclined to let him off the hook: without an inconvenient pregnancy there are rarely enough witnesses to adultery to rise to Scriptural standards for accusations, and adultery is legal in the United States. His accusation of cover-up, whatever it is, is an organizational matter for the denomination he doesn't name here, and if Trueman can live with his conscience there's not much I can say or do.
Rape and child abuse are different, however: they're illegal, and in some states people are obligated by law to report them. Fortunately for Trueman he lives in Pennsylvania, and as best I can tell because he doesn't work with children he's not legally obligated to report suspected child abuse to authorities. But I wonder why he doesn't feel a moral obligation to do something if he knows church organizations are covering up past rapes and cases of child abuse. Here are my best guesses given my reading of what he says:
- He's lying: he doesn't know of any adultery, rapes, cases of child abuse, or cover-ups.
- He's overstating how much he knows, and his inaction is in line with his actual knowledge, and he's making a cheap accusation that fits the flow of his blog post.
- He's not lying, but he doesn't think adultery, rape, child abuse, and cover-up of same are serious enough to warrant action.
- He's not lying, he understands the seriousness of what he's saying, and he doesn't care enough to do anything.
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