The social work of the Catholic Church is so intimately bound up with its whole view of life and its normal service of souls that one cannot understand its spirit, agencies or motives unless they are studied in their organic relation to the processes of spiritual life fostered in the traditions of the Church. Doctrinally and historically social service is part of the soul's supernatural life; the development of spiritual emotions concerning one's fellowman is due largely to teaching and practice concerning social service, which have been in the foreground in the life of the Church. Hence, any objective description must take beginning in the estimate of social service to be found in the Catholic view of life. In the exposition here offered, attention is confined to the Church in United States. By social work may be understood service of the weak by the strong. Whether the relation be direct or indirect, the aim is one-to sustain the helpless weak, to strengthen the hopeless weak, to protect the defenseless weak, and to prevent weakness when possible, making the individual self-sufficient, in advance of falling victim to circumstances which rob him of strength and outlook. Whether weakness is in the individual or in the mass; whether culpable or blameless; whether due to calamity, accident or the merciless evolution of industry, it does not affect the claim of the weak or the motive of the strong in giving aid. The Church is vividly conscious of natural and supernatural solidarity in the race; she accepts Christ's teaching on the dignity and merit of social service, seeing in it an essential section in the supreme law of love. Whatever changes social development may bring into the details of social weakness, the spirit and motive of the Church's relation to it remain unchanged, though, naturally, methods will vary with time and place. In the mind of the Church, then, social service is supernatural in character, motive and result. It is an organic part of religious activity, of the process of individual sanctification. (473)