How do nuns help in the Church?

Roman Catholic Answer:There are two different kinds of women religious: the first, with which most people are familiar are sisters. Sisters usually take simple promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They usually have six months of postulancy when they live with a community to see if they have a vocation, then they are clothed: they receive the religious habit of their congregation and spent a year in the novitiate where they learn to live the religious life. After that they are juniors and they begin whatever work their congregation is involved in. Most religious sisters classically have taught school, gone into nursing, etc. These are the sisters many of us older folks were taught by in school, and nursed by in hospitals. Nuns are usually cloistered, they take solemn vows, and are enclosed in their monasteries. Some of them are "extern" sisters able to go out to drive to the store or other errands. Nuns include contemplative orders like the Carmelites, some Benedictines, Cisterians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), Carthusians (hermits) and other orders. Nuns primary vocation is to pray, they often celebrate an extended Office (the different hours of prayer that all religious and priests are bound to, a sung Conventual mass (the Eucharist for the whole community). They usually earn their living through sewing things like altar vestments, vestments for priests, make altar breads, etc.

Roman Catholic AnswerA nun is a woman who has dedicated her life to the worship of God under solemn vows and is usually cloistered and bound to the recitation of the Divine Office each day. Most nuns take vows of Obedience, Stability, and Conversion of Manners. Other nuns take the same vows as sisters: poverty, chastity, and obedience. The Benedictine vow of Conversion of Manners includes chastity and poverty in it.