Nun
A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service and contemplation, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent. The term is often used interchangeably with religious sisters, who do take simple vows but live an active vocation of prayer and charitable work in the wider society.
In Christianity, nuns are found in the Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican and some Presbyterian traditions, as well as other Christian denominations. In the Buddhist tradition, female monastics are known as Bhikkhuni, and take several additional vows compared to male monastics. Nuns are most common in Mahayana Buddhism, but have more recently become more prevalent in other traditions.
Christianity
Catholicism
In the Catholic tradition, there are many religious institutes of nuns and sisters, each with its own charism or special character. Traditionally, nuns are members of enclosed religious orders and take solemn religious vows, while sisters do not live in the papal enclosure and formerly took vows called "simple vows".As monastics, nuns living within an enclosure historically commit to recitation of the full Divine Office throughout the day in church, usually in a solemn manner. They were formerly distinguished within the monastic community as "choir nuns", as opposed to lay sisters who performed upkeep of the monastery or errands outside the cloister. This last task is still often entrusted to women, called "externs", who live in the monastery, but outside the enclosure. They were usually either oblates or members of the associated Third Order, often wearing a different habit or the standard woman's attire of the period.
Membership and vows
In general, when a woman enters a religious order or monastery she first undergoes a period of testing life for six months to two years called a postulancy. If she, and the order, determine that she may have a vocation to the life, she receives the habit of the order and undertakes the novitiate, a period of living the life of the religious institute without yet taking vows. Upon completion of this period she may take her initial, temporary vows. Temporary vows last one to three years, typically, and will be professed for not less than three years and not more than six. Finally, she will petition to make her "perpetual profession", taking permanent, solemn vows.In the branches of the Benedictine tradition, nuns take vows of stability, obedience, and conversion of life. In other traditions, such as the Poor Clares and the Dominican nuns, they take the threefold vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. These are known as the 'evangelical counsels' as opposed to 'monastic vows' proper. Most orders of nuns not listed here follow one of these two patterns, with some Orders taking an additional vow related to the specific work or character of their Order.
File:Bridgettine sisters b.jpg|right|thumb|Bridgettine Sisters at the March For Life in Washington, D.C., January 2009
File:MotherTeresa 094.jpg|right|thumb|Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity
Cloistered nuns observe "papal enclosure" rules, and their nunneries typically have walls separating the nuns from the outside world. The nuns rarely leave though they may receive visitors in specially built parlors, often with either a grille or half-wall separating the nuns from visitors. They are usually self-sufficient, earning money by selling jams, candies or baked goods by mail order, or by making liturgical items.
They often undertake contemplative ministries – that is, a community of nuns is often associated with prayer for some particular good or supporting the missions of another order by prayer. Yet religious sisters can also perform this form of ministry, e.g., the Maryknoll Missionary Sisters have small houses of contemplative sisters, some in mission locations, who pray for the work of the priests, brothers, and other sisters of their congregation, and since Vatican II have added retreat work and spiritual guidance to their apostolate; the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master are also cloistered sisters who receive visitors and pray in support of their sister congregation, the Daughters of St. Paul in their media ministry.
Leadership
A canoness is a nun who corresponds to the male equivalent of canon, usually following the Rule of St. Augustine. The origin and rules of monastic life are common to both. As with the canons, differences in the observance of rule gave rise to two types: the canoness regular, taking the traditional religious vows, and the secular canoness, who did not take vows and thus remained free to own property and leave to marry, should they choose. This was primarily a way of leading a pious life for the women of aristocratic families and generally disappeared in the modern age, except for the modern Lutheran convents of Germany.A nun who is elected to head her religious house is termed an abbess if the house is an abbey, a prioress if it is a monastery, or more generically may be referred to as "Mother Superior" and styled "Reverend Mother". The distinction between abbey and monastery has to do with the terms used by a particular order or by the level of independence of the religious house. Technically, a convent is any home of a community of sisters – or, indeed, of priests and brothers, though this term is rarely used in the United States. The term "monastery" is often used by The Benedictine family to speak of the buildings and "convent" when referring to the community. Neither is gender specific. 'Convent' is often used of the houses of certain other institutes.
The traditional dress for women in religious communities consists of a tunic, which is tied around the waist with a cloth or leather belt. Over the tunic some nuns wear a scapular which is a garment of long wide piece of woolen cloth worn over the shoulders with an opening for the head. Some wear a white wimple and a veil, the most significant and ancient aspect of the habit. Some orders – such as the Dominicans – wear a large rosary on their belt. Benedictine abbesses wear a cross or crucifix on a chain around their neck.
After the Second Vatican Council, many religious institutes chose in their own regulations to no longer wear the traditional habit and did away with choosing a religious name. Catholic Church canon law states: "Religious are to wear the habit of the institute, made according to the norm of proper law, as a sign of their consecration and as a witness of poverty."
Distinction between a nun and a religious sister
Although usage has varied throughout church history, typically "nun" is used for women who have taken "solemn" vows, and "sister" is used for women who have taken "simple" vows.During the first millennium, nearly all religious communities of men and women were dedicated to prayer and contemplation. These monasteries were built in remote locations or were separated from the world by means of a precinct wall. The mendicant orders, founded in the 13th century, combined a life of prayer and dedication to God with active works of preaching, hearing confessions, and service to the poor, and members of these orders are known as friars rather than monks. At that time, and into the 17th century, Church custom did not allow women to leave the cloister if they had taken religious vows. Female members of the mendicant orders continued to observe the same enclosed life as members of the monastic orders.
Originally, the vows taken by profession in any religious institute approved by the Holy See were classified as solemn. This was declared by Pope Boniface VIII. The situation changed in the 16th century. In 1521, two years after the Fourth Lateran Council had forbidden the establishment of new religious institutes, Pope Leo X established a religious Rule with simple vows for those tertiaries attached to existing communities who undertook to live a formal religious life. In 1566 and 1568, Pope Pius V rejected this class of congregation, but they continued to exist and even increased in number. After at first being merely tolerated, they afterwards obtained approval. Finally in the 20th century, Pope Leo XIII recognized as religious all men and women who took simple vows. Their lives were oriented not to the ancient monastic way of life, but more to social service and to evangelization, both in Europe and in mission areas. Their number had increased dramatically in the upheavals brought by the French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic invasions of other Catholic countries, depriving thousands of religious of the income that their communities held because of inheritances and forcing them to find a new way of living the religious life. But members of these new associations were not recognized as "religious" until Pope Leo XIII's Constitution "Conditae a Christo" of 8 December 1900.
The 1917 Code of Canon Law reserved the term "nun" for religious women who took solemn vows or who, while being allowed in some places to take simple vows, belonged to institutes whose vows were normally solemn. It used the word "sister" exclusively for members of institutes for women that it classified as "congregations"; and for "nuns" and "sisters" jointly it used the Latin word religiosae. The same religious order could include both "nuns" and "sisters", if some members took solemn vows and others simple vows.
The new legal code of the Catholic Church which was adopted in 1983, however, remained silent on this matter. Whereas previously the code distinguished between orders and congregations, the code now refers simply to religious institutes.
Since the code of 1983, the Vatican has addressed the renewal of the contemplative life of nuns. It produced the letter Verbi Sponsa in 1999, the apostolic constitution Vultum Dei quaerere in 2016, and the instruction Cor Orans in 2018 "which replaced the 1999 document Verbi Sponsa and attempted to bring forward the ideas regarding contemplative life born during the Second Vatican Council".