Dowling sends out messages on Facebook and Twitter - calling attention to media coverage about a Vatican probe into U.S. women's orders, for example, or directing surfers to a Web site at which they can hear President Barack Obama's recent conference call with faith leaders on health care reform. Or posing this recent "Question of the day: If you were sitting on your porch chatting w/God sitting across from you, what is the one question you would ask God?"
"It's like Six Degrees of Separation, because one person leads to another, and to another and to another," Dowling says. "We have individuals, young women, who have joined our groups, and it's always kind of a marvel to me. It's like, well, how did you find us?"
Dooley attended Catholic school as a child but did not consider religious life until a few years ago.
"Just through a deepening prayer life and more involvement in my church, I felt a drawing toward something more," she says. "That just didn't go away for me, so I began to explore what that was."
A journalist for the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, she began her search online and was quickly overwhelmed by the wealth of information. A vocations director on the West Coast advised her to look in her own backyard, and Bon Secours operates hospitals in Norfolk and Portsmouth, Va. She found the order, began reading its Web site, and then called Dowling.
While the Internet provided a point of entry, Dooley says, it was the weekend visits she made to the U.S. headquarters in Marriottsville and the conversations she had with the sisters that helped her to discern her calling to the religious life. She now plans to spend the next three months in orientation, beginning a formation process that could take six years to a decade.
"My feeling was that I would continue to take steps toward this until I felt that I was no longer to continue forward," she says. "And I never felt that I was no longer to continue forward, and so here I am."
Dowling says the Internet is a helpful tool, in its place.
"It certainly does not replace the personal touch, because in the end, that's ultimately why somebody would enter," she says. "It's the personal invitation, the personal interest in the development of a relationship and getting to know a community and whether it's the right fit or not. They have to feel comfortable with this group and all the technology is not going to give you an answer. Certainly in the end, it's all about whether the person has a call or not."
