It used to be a lot different. It was once a matter of great pride, and regarded as the height of respectability, for an Irish family to have a "bride of Christ" in its ranks. Entering a convent gave security to girls who hadn't a hope of getting a civil service job, who had no decent marriage prospects, or whose families hadn't money for further education. A nun enjoyed a much higher status than most women.
I went with my mother to see Peter Mullan's powerful film, The Magdalene Sisters, last weekend. The timing of its release in cinemas around the country couldn't have come at a worse time for the Catholic Church, already desperately trying to come to grips with the fall-out from the Prime Time programme on clerical sex abuse.
My mother grew up in rural Ireland at a time when the notorious Magdalene laundries were in their prime. I am convent educated, and passed through the hands of nuns in the 1960s and 1970s. We found the film to be deeply disturbing and depressing.
"Magdalene" means a public sinner, and it is estimated that 30,000 women were detained at Magdalene institutions over several decades before the last one closed in Drumcondra in Dublin in 1996.
The film depicts the degradation and brutality experienced by young Catholic women who were banished to these homes run by the Sisters of Mercy.
Magdalene girls were cast aside by their families and by society. Their "sins" varied from being unmarried mothers to being too pretty, simple minded, too clever or a victim of rape and talking about it.
To atone for their "sins", these girls slaved 364 days a year in the laundries for no pay. They were half starved, humiliated and often beaten. About 40 per cent gave birth outside of wedlock and had had their babies forcibly removed from them. Their sentence was indefinite and thousands lived and died in these harsh, loveless places.
It is impossible to justify the unforgivable cruelty meted out by nuns to the Magdalene girls, and to children by religious in other institutions around the country up to the last decade. The Magdalene experience goes alongside the Goldenbridge orphanage controversy, and the current clerical sex abuse scandal, as another tragic episode that has seriously damaged the Catholic Church.
However, don't forget these institutions were often the only refuge for young women who had been abandoned and rejected by their own families. The very existence of Magdalene homes reflected the social values of the time.
Many of the convents that produced the Magdalene girls' tormentors are no more. In 1981, there were 850 large communities of nuns in Ireland. Today there are 1,335 much smaller groups of nuns, living mostly in houses within the lay community.
Nuns are taking the brunt of the vocations crisis within the Catholic Church. They are ageing and have been forced to relinquish convents, schools, hospitals and various social programmes due to dwindling numbers. Their role and status are diminishing rapidly.
In 2000 there were 10,987 Irish nuns at home and abroad, down from 14,130 in 1990, 16,361 in 1980 and 18,662 in 1970.
There were just 21 admissions to nuns' orders in 1999, compared to 227 in 1970. Seven out of every 10 Irish nuns are aged over 60. As the elderly sisters die out, a question mark hangs over the future of female religious orders in Ireland.
Just like the priesthood, becoming a nun has become a career choice few are prepared to take now.
There were social pressures on girls to enter and many took the calling for the wrong reasons. What an unnatural existence it was for dozens of young women to be closeted together in big old Victorian convent buildings, "married to God". For generations young women went along with this. They disciplined themselves and confessed to "sins of pride". They fasted and poured out prayers.
It is little wonder there were some bad and cruel nuns who took their frustrations and unhappiness out on children in their charge.
I was taught by the Brigidines, and my memories of the nuns are positive. I clearly remember the arrival during my first year in secondary school of two fresh-faced young Sisters, probably not long out of the novitiate.
One day I got to see one of the new Sisters' barren little bedrooms and I thought how lonely she must be. Even then it struck me that these bright and intelligent young nuns should not be cooped up in a rambling old building with a community of women whose average age was at least 50.
There is no doubt that some nuns down the years did not cover themselves in glory. But their motivation in many cases was good. Only for nuns many thousands of people in Ireland would not have received a good education.
I will never forget Sister Camillus, my 5th and 6th class teacher. In winter, she would boil up a big pot of soup on a cooker ring in the classroom to give to a few families in the school who were in need of it.
The stories told in The Magdalene Sisters are horrific. Thankfully it is all in the past. And let's hope that religious are never, ever, again allowed to abuse their positions, as was the case in these awful places in the past. But if you go to see this joyless film, remember that, just like priests, not all nuns are bad.