Mark's Notebook


	If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of him. - Thomas Carlyle

Theology On Tap

San Francisco Chronicle

Thursday 20 October 2005, 9:18 am
Keywords: Christian Topics , News Articles

A priest walks into a bar -- and serves up some theology

by Marianne Costantinou

Not all is typical on this Tuesday night at Ireland's 32, one of the city's most popular bars, on Geary Boulevard in the Richmond District. On one side of the bar, about two dozen folks are gathered round, and while most are nursing beers, they're wearing name tags and speaking softly when they're speaking at all. But mostly they're just listening to two speakers. The crowd is made up of young people in their 20s and 30s. The speakers are old enough to be their mothers -- if they didn't happen to be nuns.

This is "Theology on Tap," a national series of seminars run in bars and restaurants by the Catholic Church. The program began 25 years ago in the Archdiocese of Chicago as a way to reach out to young people who either didn't attend church regularly or had questions that they didn't feel comfortable discussing on church grounds. Today, parishes in at least 30 cities host the seminars. In San Francisco, they're run by the archdiocese's Office of Young Adult Ministry and the University of San Francisco's Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought.

"This is where Jesus would be, with the people," said Mary Criscione, a lecturer at St. Patrick's Seminary and at Santa Clara University.

"You always get in debates in a pub. Heck, this pub would traditionally have political discussions," Eileen Salinas added, pointing to the bar's ceiling, covered with protest signs championing the Irish Republican Army. "Why not have a theological discussion?"

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/20/THEOLOGY.TMP&nl=top