Social Work: Calling or Career?

churchly call of the clergy (the foremost learned profession) now seems anachronistic, out of step with the pace of modem professions. The public hardly views most professionals as respondents to the call, without greedy ambition in receiving a proffered office. Granted, this may be somewhat less the case with professions such as nursing and social work-where some vestige of selflessness seems to persist-but the main point holds. Today the term profession is linked with the idea of a career