Lay Theology

Six young Roman Catholic men in San Francisco last week put behind them for good six ordinary jobs and took up a new profession that they expect to find richly idealistic and well paid, too: lay theology. Once trained, they will be charged with bringing--by the force of their reasoning and knowledge--thousands of Californians, Arizonans and Nevadans into the Catholic Church.

They had already studied for a year; this week they said goodbye to their families and disappeared behind the walls of San Francisco University's Phelan Hall atop one of the city's hills, to spend the next three weeks going through the famed Spiritual Exercises of 16th century St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order. Beginning July 1, they will be ready to teach the theology of the Roman Catholic Church to ordinary men and women--Catholic and non-Catholic--in any parish that hires them. And hire is no figure of speech; each of them will start at $500 a month and be raised steadily to at least $12,000 a year within 36 months. The Cost of Conversions. The project of which they are the advance guard was born of zooming Catholic expansion, a shortage of priests, a better educated laity, and Father Eugene Robert Zimmers. Tall, kinetic Jesuit Zimmers, 41, learned a lot about laymen in his uncle's movie theater in Racine, Wis., where the double feature changed three times a week. He learned a lot about making converts at his first church, St. Matthew's in Phoenix, Ariz., where he discovered that the cost of converting a man could be covered by the increased income that he brought to the church. There was no reason, therefore, he reasoned, why a well-trained layman who specialized in teaching the faith could not be paid the kind of salary that would attract top people.

Jesuit Zimmers sold his idea to enough bishops and pastors in California, Arizona and Nevada to finance the organization last year of the Institute of Lay Theology at the Jesuit-founded University of San Francisco (enrollment: 4,117). Here, for the past ten months, a faculty of 27 professors has been teaching the fine points of

Catholicism and the techniques of expounding it to the first six hand-picked men.

Martin H. O'Brien, 35, is a former insurance broker with a wife and six children; George C. Randol, 30, was a copy editor on the San Francisco Chronicle; the other four are 26-year-olds--ex-Paratrooper Thomas R. Keene, Graduate Student (in philosophy) Roger E. Armstrong. Youth Counselor Joseph E. Fresques, High School Teacher Thomas P. Grace. Each of them plans to work in two neighboring parishes, giving in each a series of 24 lectures four times a year, as well as following up on converts and getting to know the parishes and their people "on a country-doctor basis."

Around in Rags. Father Zimmers' lay theologians will take no vows, practice only such asceticism as is normal for laymen. "We may go around in rags," says Keene, "but it won't be because we've taken any vow of poverty." Once a year, they will gather to trade ideas and take exams in their continuing studies "to prevent them from getting to be theological slobs," says Zimmers.

His institute has contracted to fill 18 parish posts a year from now. and still more parishes are on a waiting list. "We want to break that old idea of 'keeping the faith,' " he said last week. "That's been the trouble with it--too much keeping and not enough sharing."

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