What’s a good way to attract women to the religious life? How about this DVD:

A San Bernardino Catholic production company is using DVDs to address a vexing problem for the Catholic Church: a severe and growing shortage of nuns.

The half-hour DVD, which will be distributed nationwide by Wordnet Productions, features women talking about what led them to become religious sisters.

The number of nuns nationwide has plummeted from nearly 180,000 in 1965 to fewer than 62,000 in 2008, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. That 66 percent decline is more than double the 31 percent drop in the number of priests during the same time period.

The average nun in the United States is in her mid-70s, said Mary Gautier, a senior research associate with the center.

Most of the 18 nuns interviewed for “Jesus Calls Women” are in their 20s and 30s. Scenes show them playing guitar, cooking and playing basketball. They smile, laugh and talk about the joys and challenges of being nuns.

Sister Joanna Strouse, a nun at Sacred Heart Retreat Camp at Big Bear Lake who is featured in the DVD, said she never seriously considered becoming a nun until as a teenager she went to a vocation day — in which girls and women see what religious life is like — at the invitation of a family friend.

At the time, Strouse, now 38, was a senior in high school planning to become an aerospace engineer. Then she heard nuns discuss how they viewed being religious sisters as God’s plan for their happiness.

Something clicked.

“I had never thought of God in that way, the fact that God has a personal love for me and a plan for me,” Strouse said.

Sister Pat Phillips, who saw oversaw production of the video and conducted most of the interviews, had briefly thought of religious life after attending Catholic youth workshops the summer before her senior year of high school.

But, she said, “I kind of pushed it aside and didn’t want to think about it.”

Several months later, she got sick with the mumps and finally had time to reflect. She realized she had a calling.

Phillips said one reason fewer girls and young women do not even consider becoming sisters is because nuns are less visible than in the past. Few teachers in Catholic schools today are nuns. And the sexual revolution of the 1960s made chastity a more difficult concept, said Phillips, a sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.

You can read more about it at the link. And you can purchase the DVD right here.