It’s National Vocations Awareness Week, and out in Erie, Pennsylvania, some are speculating that the economic downturn could mean a surprising uptick in vocations to religious life:

The Rev. Edward Lohse said it’s too early to tell if America’s rough economy will mean an upswing in the number of Catholic priests and women religious.

But he suspects it will.

“It’s got to cause people to look inside themselves somewhat,” he said.

Lohse, 47, chancellor and vocation director for the Catholic Diocese of Erie, believes it was the experiences of the Great Depression and World War II that led to the last explosion in the number of priests and nuns.

“It really made people look at the tough questions of life,” he said.

This week, the Catholic Church in the U.S. will encourage people, especially young people, to recognize where God is in their lives and perhaps answer his call. The Church is celebrating National Vocation Awareness Week through Saturday.

“This week reminds us that it is our responsibility to pray for vocations and to invite young people to consider a call to ordained ministry and consecrated life,” said the Rev. James Steffes, executive director of the Secretariat of Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Some parishes desperately need people to answer that call.

Other churches around the country are either sharing pastors or turning to foreign-born priests to fill posts.

Lohse said the Erie diocese, which has 225,000 Catholics, doesn’t seek out foreign-born priests or candidates for seminary. He also said there are no parishes in the 13-county diocese where a priest shows up only once a month.

“There is no place that goes without Sunday Eucharist,” he said.

Some of the area’s religious men do serve multiple churches or serve a church and fill another role.

Members of Erie’s Immaculate Conception Church, whose pastor also teaches at Gannon University, said a declining number of priests was one reason they were given for their upcoming merger with St. Mary Church. Officials also cited a drop in membership in both parishes.

Asked if there was a priest shortage in the Erie diocese, Lohse said, “There is a shortage insofar as we have fewer priests than we used to … which causes us to think through much more concretely the distribution of priests. We are able to meet all of our needs by the prudent distribution of resources, namely priests, matched to the distribution of Catholics.

“What that means, however, is we really can’t afford to send a priest somewhere for 20 people. … There’s a day when we could have afforded that.”

Lohse believes the boom of priests and women religious in the 1950s and 1960s was a historical anomaly coming out of the Great Depression and World War II. Then the pendulum swung back the other way, he said.

Sister Janet Goetz, 61, vocation minister for the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, said the ’50s and ’60s were unusual years when large numbers of women entered monasteries or convents.

“Before and since those years, the average number of women entering (a convent) was one or two a year,” she said.

The newest member of her community took final vows in 2007, Goetz said.

Sister Sheila Stevenson, 61, vocation minister for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas — New York, Pennsylvania, Pacific West Community, said she entered her religious community with 25 other women in 1965.

Numbers began going down after the Second Vatican Council, held in 1962-65, said Sister Linda Fusco, vocation director for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Northwestern Pennsylvania.

Fusco, 58, entered the local Sisters of St. Joseph 16 years ago and professed her final vows seven years ago. She’s the newest member of her community.

Before Vatican II, females could only serve in the church as women religious, she said.

The Rev. Michael Renninger, the Virginia priest behind an online vocation campaign, said that in years past, convents and seminaries were also places where Catholic girls and boys could get an education.

He also said that back in the 1950s, there was a lot of talk about becoming priests and nuns but that parents who heard so much of that have said little about it to their own children.

And those children now have opportunities apart from a committed religious life, with the laity able to do more in the church and more educational avenues open to Catholic students.

But Renninger believes not just the church is struggling.

He sees a decline in what he called “helping professions” — social work, nursing, education. He believes it’s “part of a bigger cultural thing,” a definition of success in which people place more focus on money and material things than aiding others.

Still, local vocation directors believe trends in religious vocations could change again.

“There are indications of a shift,” Goetz said. “More women are…indicating interest in long-term commitments.”

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