Can the very tools you’re using right now help create vocations? Some are betting on it. More and more Catholic orders are using the internet and computers as recruiting tools, hoping that a mouse and a keyboard can help launch a soul or two into religious life:

On the popular social networking site Facebook, Tracey Dugas flashes a winsome smile and a peace sign. But she is not looking to share photos and send instant messages to friends. Instead, she’s using the wonders of the Web to recruit women who might want to follow in her footsteps.

Dugas — or, as she prefers, Sister Tracey — is a 35-year-old nun with the Daughters of St. Paul, and as the director of vocations for the congregation’s local house, she wants to make herself accessible to those contemplating a commitment to Jesus Christ.

“You have to go where the young people are,” Dugas explained. “And young people are on the Web.”

As technology permeates almost every area of secular life, Roman Catholic communities around the world also are adapting it to their efforts to reach out to youths. Priests blog, nuns correspond via e-mail, and religious orders update their Web sites to attract young people and tell them about the possibilities of religious life.

“If you’re not on the Internet, you’re missing an entire audience,” said Brother Paul Bednarczyk, director of the National Religious Vocation Conference in Chicago. “Forty years ago, a young person would go to the parish priest for more information on religious life. They now go to Google and type ‘religious vocations.”‘

When they do, they might find The Benedictine Sisters of Florida, whose Web page asks: “Did you get your IM from God?”

The Marist Brothers, who run Miami’s Christopher Columbus High School, maintain a brothers’ blog, profiles on MySpace and Facebook, and use YouTube and podcasts for a new campaign called “Real Brothers. Real Stories. A Real Difference.” And the National Religious Vocation Conference runs an online Vision Vocation Match Service that closely resembles a dating service, with Christ and religious life as the ultimate match.

“I’m not so great with technology,” said Brother Peter Guadalupe of Columbus, who is featured in the Marists’ campaign. “But I do know that the present generation is very computer literate. You can’t expect them to tear out a card from a magazine. You use what’s there to get your message out.”

Religious-community Web sites are nothing new, but younger priests and nuns are slowly expanding their reach and accessibility by incorporating the latest in communication technology.

The Rev. Manny Alvarez, the 31-year-old vocations director for the Archdiocese of Miami, said miamivocations.com is “still in its infancy. We need to use it more, but we already have young guys coming up who are very tech savvy.”

A new seminarian has offered to blog about his life, and others are interested in doing podcasts.

“When they come to us, they’re very well informed, because they’ve already surfed so many different Web sites,” Alvarez said. “It’s like researching colleges.”

Last August, when the National Religious Vocation Conference introduced VocationMatch.org — also available in Spanish at www.EncuentroVocacional.org — to help match candidates for religious life with potential communities, the group wasn’t sure how the site would be received. But it has surpassed expectations, with more than 4,700 unique visitors logged on so far, a notable upswing from another online Web site the group had hosted, which produced only 600 inquiries a year.

The new site features animated guides and addresses such issues as education, age, gender, preferred ministry, preferred community size, prayer styles and whether the person would like to wear a habit. More than 300 religious communities participate.

“It’s been hugely popular,” said Patrice Touhy, the site’s executive director. “For the discerner, it helps narrow their search. It’s a great place to start.”

Speaking from personal experience, I have to say I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails from men (and their wives) discerning a vocation to the diaconate, all of whom discovered this blog and decided to check it out. You never know how the Holy Spirit is going to work. Maybe the dove uses a mouse?

Photo: Massimo Sambucetti/AP