Talking to myself here
I am not sure if L.A. is requiring any college degree to start the Parsih Life Director program.
The official document from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is that the canidate for the position of Parish Life Director is to have a Masters Degree in Theology, Pastoral Service or be otherwise qualified in the eyes of the Archbishop.
That means that if you do not have the degree already, you can take a training program (already developed by the Archdiocese and offered through the Seminary) in order to check off that item on the list.
The list with the rest of the requirements is rather long, by the way. I think the Archbishop wants to be very careful in selecting who will be hired for these positions.
Also, the model currently being proposed is not that the Parish Life Director will necessarily replace the Pastor.
The model works in a number of scenarios, some of them with full-time resident priests (one of them serving as Pastor), some scenarios with only part-time priests available to a specific parish and also in the worst-case scenario in which a parish would have to survive with no priest regularly assigned to it.
A lay Parish Life Director has a role in each of these scenarios.
Shalom,
Memo
