It's gotten that bad.

The Roman Catholic Church is advertising for nuns.

Last summer, the Dallas, Pa., province of the Sisters of Mercy placed several advertisements in Collegian Magazine and The Daily Collegian to stir interest in committing to the Roman Catholic sisterhood.

The Sisters of Mercy is a national Roman Catholic group of about 7,400 nuns in the United States and South America. The Dallas province targeted Centre County as a prime recruiting area because sisters work in the area, especially in Johnstown and Cresson, said Stephanie Berdy, the Dallas unit's director of communications.

"There are just so many other options today (for women)," said Sister Constance Sophy, the province's director of initial incorporation. Sophy provides spiritual direction to women becoming nuns.

Today's women seek more temporary commitments like Jesuit volunteer corps and the Peace Corps, Sophy said. Marriage, family, material goods and the independence of single life also pose unsacrificeable choices, she said.

"I think it's pretty much tied into the times," Berdy agreed. "People are not making long-term commitments in all walks of life."

The country's Roman Catholic bishops decided to recruit because fewer women now seek the lifetime commitment of sisterhood, Berdy said.

The U.S. Catholic Communications Campaign recently granted the national Sisters of Mercy $90,400 to kick off a national media campaign to change the popular image of the Roman Catholic nun, Berdy said.

The Sisters of Mercy boasts sisters with careers ranging from lawyers, doctors and administrators to teachers, hospital nurses and midwives -- jobs not traditionally associated with nuns.

"A lot of people have images of sisters as they were in years gone by," Berdy said. "The idea was to erase the old stereotype and also to see if young women today might become interested in religious life."

That old stereotype, along with a perception of the Church as patriarchal and sexist, has deterred some women from entering the sisterhood.

"Women don't want to become a part of the church that perpetuates that institutional sexism," Sophy said.

Responding to whether she thinks sexism exists in the church, she said, "I don't see how I could be honest and say I didn't."

"But I also see the value of that," she added. "You cannot effect change and growth from the outside. It has to be from the inside out."