My path from wretched "live and let live" sinner to the Catholic Church was not a direct one.
My military-issue dog tags chronical the path I took, from "Non-Denom. Christian" to "Lutheran" to "Roman Catholic."
The stopover in Protestantism was no accident. My mother was raised Catholic and raised me to despise the Church. My father's parents were very devout Methodists, which meant that they also disliked Catholicism.
With the Church out of the question, I had to go through the alternatives and the process inexorably led to the Tiber.
I say this because I have a great deal of sympathy for Carl Trueman's desire for "good Protestant ethicists."
The problem, as he describes it, is that Protestantism has always relied on a culture of Christianity to sustain it rather than developing its own particularly system of ethics:
Today the situation is far different. In the space of a few decades, the moral intuitions of society have not simply parted company with those of Christianity—they have come to stand in direct opposition to many of them. That changes the pedagogical dynamics of church life. The churches now need to teach Christian ethics more explicitly and more thoroughly, because that is where the wider culture will challenge Christian discipleship most powerfully. Indeed, it is already doing so, and orthodox Protestantism seems ill-equipped to address this.
I agree completely. The problem is that Protestantism by its very nature is incapable of creating this. Protestantism was born out of the rejection of Catholic authority, insisting that scripture alone had the answers to all of life's questions. It went further to insist that each person was entitled to their own interpretation, ensuring that the various denominations were spectacularly ill-equipped to maintain theological discipline within their own denominations.
The result is a continued fracturing of Protestant churches. Don't like what the leadership says? Make your own church!
Further complicating matters is the Protestant concept of Jesus Christ as a personal savior, one that denies the need for anything more than worshipper's intent. Since justification is by faith alone, a family utilizing IVF to create one child at the cost of many has every confidence that it will be forgiven for they (and their children conceived through IVF) believe, and that is all one needs.
Some months ago I attended a Baptist funeral, and all present confidently asserted that the recently departed was "saved" because he believed in Jesus. This is how you get Yard Sign Calvinism.
That being the case, how does a Protestant ethicist argue that using IVF is evil and will have repercussions in the afterlife? "Yes, pastor, I suppose that is bad, but we love Jesus, want children and we will raise them to love Him. Surely, God gave this way to raise a family on purpose!"
Catholics have a much easier time of this because they have a clear ethical system built over centuries. They understand that good intentions are no excuse for committing acts of evil. Sometimes what we want isn't what God wants, and this acceptance (which Protestants consider fatalism), provides a much stronger anchor for one's faith and actions.
There is also the fact that American Protestants derive much of their identity from not being Catholic. They don't kneel before statues, give up meat on Fridays during Lent, fast before Easter or have to confess their sins to a priest in order to be forgiven.
This last element (in my opinion) is one of the biggest differences. Having to confess sin to another human being is entirely different from silently telling God you're super sorry and promise you won't do it again. And then doing it again.
Priests ask questions, like: "How often do you sin?" "Have you confessed this before?" "Why haven't you given up this sin?"
This is a very effective way to give up sinful behavior. Sins that had dogged me for decades fell before the piercing questions of my confessors, and the (wholly deserved) shame and guilt motivated me to make life-changes for the better.
I don't see a mechanism within Protestantism that has the same effect because faith alone justifies anything to them. In my time as a Protestant, I never felt the same sting of conscience that I did as a Catholic.
As Trueman admits, Protestantism was at its strongest when social pressure did the heavy lifting, and absent that advantage, both mainline and evangelicals seem to be struggling to define their ethics.