This story makes for interesting reading. And should it come as any surprise that that what young people in this day and age are seeking is not some new-fangled progressive excursion into the new age, but traditional orders with traditional beliefs and teachings behind it?

Like many of the convents experiencing growth, St. Cecilia is a traditional order. Some young candidates say they are looking for communities that still wear habits and are rooted in conventional theology.

Individualism leads to loneliness and the millennial generation is searching for a sense of community, says Dr. Alice Laffey, associate professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

But, interestingly, it’s anything but traditional in the way these religious orders are marketing themselves:

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the largest religious order in the United States, hired an outside ad agency to design trendy ads to be placed in secular magazines like People and as Internet banner ads.

“We’re looking at different ways to draw people in,” spokeswoman Catherine Sherrod said.

McGlynn, of Tallahassee, Fla., watched a promotional DVD and visited the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist’s Web site before deciding to join.

“That helps a lot because online you can read about the community and see pictures and see what they’re about,” she said.

Good for them, and a refreshing alternative, I must say, to the bland, vanilla progressive nonsense typically found in the Episcopal Church and other mainline Protestant churches nowadays. I’ve always said that institutions that try to be everything to everyone end up being nothing to no one.

While I’ve had my problems with the Roman Catholic Church in the past with the way it handled the clergy sexual abuse scandals – the primary reason why I’ll probably never cross over the aisle to Rome – I respect their unwillingness not to cave in on their traditions and traditional beliefs and practices. It’s often tough to have control over 100% of what you preach, but far better that then to practice far less than what your supposed to be preaching, which is what’s often happening on the Protestant side of the fence.