But the BOC can't afford one-woman-men now?
One-woman-men are cheap. Dime a dozen. I myself am one. We're everywhere and we always will be. There's always going to be some one-woman-men no matter the prevailing cultural morals, we don't care about them, that doesn't make sense to us, it never made sense to us, so we just ignore it and we're one-woman-men anyway.
Paul just told Titus, Look, look for one-woman-men, they're out there. You'll find them. These were the pastors of the first Church.
Why is Paul's direction to allow marriage discarded in favor of someone's who's obviously less qualified to decide?
It's not a tradition of man but of God. The tradition I'm talking about is the one where the bishops upon the bodily departure of the Apostles 'get to' administrate the Church including the requirements for new and existing priests and bishops. And deacons. Deacons are married.
Right in the passage you're complaining about as being in conflict with Catholicism, you can see the great power that Titus the bishop has. What is Paul telling him, if we were to just note the genre of this passage, or this whole letter? Paul's the Apostle who made Titus a bishop. Either that or another Apostle did. Either that or another bishop made him, who was made by Paul or one of the other of the Twelve Apostles. Either that, or the bishop who made Titus a bishop was made by another bishop, and not by an Apostle.
Paul's instructing Titus. Where is he setting out absolute principles, and where is this really somebody else's mail? Where do we draw that line? MADs here have no conceptual trouble with what "cast away", "fell", "stumbled", was "broken off", was "cut off" means. They apply it to these bishops that Paul himself was so actively involved in that he not only made bishops (ask MADs if Paul ever for example baptized anybody with his own hands) but he also instructed them in letters, personal letters, three of which we actually still have.
Somehow this office of bishop (1st Timothy 3:1) as far as MADs are concerned has been cast away, has fallen and stumbled, was broken off and cut off, somewhere in history. It's gone. Whereas Paul only ambiguously and vaguely and obliquely strove to promulgate MAD, Paul very unequivocally strove to establish the office of a bishop (1Ti3:1), but MAD has abandoned the office of a bishop, instead of abandoning MAD. That is their judgment to make and they have made it. It's their own interpretation of the Bible MAD that they support, over Paul's objectively verified and confirmed and proven office of a bishop.
And the office of a bishop is the same office that has provided us ancient confirmation that our understanding of the Trinity according to how we read the Scripture today is the same as it was all the way back in the Apostolic era and immediately following. We know other concrete beliefs the earliest Church held through the same pathway, but I'll just leave it at that it confirms what every educated mainstream Protestant believes about God wrt the Trinity. That's an incredibly good fruit.
And when your pastors and priests are celibate (I mean actually celibate, which means no 'auto' anything either, no M word, no "if your hand causes you to sin") that's incredibly good fruit too. Their whole life is devoted to us the parishioners. It's not that we don't want them to be married, it's if they are called to be celibate we are sure happy to have them as our pastors.
One-woman-men are everywhere. We have families. We're distracted from pastoring. You don't want us as your pastor. Not if you know how good the fruit of truly celibate churchmen is.
