Casting an Online Net for Priests and Nuns

12 to 15 inquiries each week generated by the Los
Angeles site (www.la-archdiocese .org),JOHN KLEIN sold software for a living until one day in 1996
when he went online and suddenly found himself on the road
to the seminary. One year later he had left his
high-powered job, sold his townhouse in the Chicago suburbs
and given away most of his possessions and was living in a
dormitory room studying theology. Five years after that, he
was ordained a Roman Catholic priest.

All because of the Internet? Well, not quite.

“The
Internet did not generate the vocation; it was just a
resource,” he said. “At that point, one of my questions
was: ”Am I too old? Is it even possible?’ ”

Father Klein, now 40 and the associate pastor of Visitation
Catholic Church in Elmhurst, Ill., had wondered for several
years whether he had a calling, but he had many questions
and no obvious way to get them answered. Or so he thought
until he typed the word “vocations” into a search engine
and it yielded a single site, www.vocations.com.

In addition to allaying his concerns that he might be too
old to get started, the site offered a self-assessment test
and links and information about various paths to the
priesthood. To his relief, he was able to find answers at
that initial stage without personal contact.

Seemingly a clearinghouse for Roman Catholic vocations, the
site was in fact a pioneering effort by one priest, the
Rev. John Regan, vocation director of the Diocese of
Joliet, Ill. “For whatever reason, people who are
considering a religious vocation want to keep it quiet,”
Father Regan said. “They don’t want to tell their parents,
they don’t want to tell a lot of their friends.” It is not,
it seems, like declaring you want to be a doctor or an
accountant, he said.

Sister Kathy Bryant, director of vocations for the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which has a prominent Internet
presence, echoed his observation. “It’s a very safe forum
for them to ask some honest questions without feeling
embarrassed or making a big appointment and formalizing it
or giving away who they are,” she said. In a typical week,
she receives 12 to 15 inquiries generated by the Los
Angeles site (www.la-archdiocese .org), some of which, she
said, are likely to begin: “Can you be a priest or a sister
if you’ve been married, or if you have had a sexual
relationship, or if you’re over 30?” (The answer to all
three questions is a conditional yes.)

Harnessing the Internet is one strategy church officials
are trying to reverse the sharp decline in the number of
Catholics committing themselves to lives as priests or nuns
over the last four decades. According to the Center for
Applied Research in the Apostolate, a nonprofit
organization that analyzes trends in the Catholic Church,
there are only 3,414 graduate-level seminarians in the
United States, down from 8,325 in 1965; there are 29,285
diocesan priests, down from 35,925 four decades ago. Nuns
have seen their numbers drop to 73,316 this year from
179,954 in 1965.

Meanwhile, the Catholic population has grown from 45
million to 63.4 million.

Where Father Regan’s use of the Web was considered novel at
the beginning, it is now widespread. Type “vocations” into
the Google search field today and the result is more than
400,000 entries, including Catholic and non-Catholic sites.
(Father Regan’s site pops up first, apparently by virtue of
having moved early to secure the vocations.com domain – as
strategic a coup as Crest’s claim on toothpaste.com.)

Father Regan, 40, who has a bachelor’s degree in
mathematics and computer science from Notre Dame, says the
site is intended for anyone exploring the Catholic
ministry, not just those in the Joliet diocese – and
indeed, it has only a handful of offerings specific to the
diocese and an abundance of general information. Father
Regan estimates that 85 percent of all Catholic dioceses in
the United States have some kind of site promoting
vocations. Costing about $1,000 a year to run, a site can
be an inexpensive recruiting tool and an easy one to
maintain. On a recent trip to Bolivia, Father Regan updated
his site from an Internet cafe.

But by the same token, the site is only an initial point of
contact. “You also have to have the way to have a personal
relationship with these people,” Father Regan said. “You
know, you could have the finest Web site, but if there
isn’t something that draws them into the relationship, then
it’s for naught.”

E-mail is often the next step, and Sister Bryant sometimes
uses such contacts to be frank about the demands and
scrutiny that candidates will face in pursuing a calling.
“It’s not vocation by default,” she said. The stakes of
religious life – vows of celibacy and obedience at a
minimum and often also a vow of poverty – make the process
a delicate and extended interaction.
The prospect of hardship did not dissuade Veronica Fajardo,
28, a bilingual special-education teacher in Los Angeles,
from pursuing what she sensed was her calling. “No matter
how hard I tried, it would just not go away,” she said. She
visited many Web sites, but it was the site of the Sisters
of the Holy Cross (www.cscsisters.org), filled with
photographs and information about their work around the
world, that caught her attention three years ago.

Struck by the willingness of the nuns to “leave their
comfort zone” and venture abroad, Ms. Fajardo concluded,
“There is something special about them if they do this.”
She was also moved by the site’s emphasis on the order’s
work for social justice. “I got to see their values,
pictures of sisters in action, their mission,” she said.

Ultimately, Ms. Fajardo contacted the community by e-mail
and arranged a visit. She now lives with nuns of the Holy
Cross order at St. Agnes Convent in Los Angeles, taking
part in a two-year program leading to formal entrance into
the congregation.

As for Father Klein, his initial contact through the Web
site led to e-mail exchanges, eventually a meeting with
Father Regan and finally the seminary. He was ordained in
the Joliet diocese in 2002, and he says he loves being a
priest despite the six-day work week and the 12- to 14-hour
days. Although he no longer needs his computer to help him
figure out what to do with his life, he did hold on to it:
it’s great for preparing homilies.

Jonathan Englert is completing “The Collar,” a nonfiction
book following four men’s paths to the priesthood, to be
published by Houghton Mifflin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/technology/circuits/23reli.html?ex=1068030528&ei=1&en=25787cb647576d57