To See, Judge, and Act: The Comeback of Latin American Theological Methodology

Latin American Catholicism often places lived experience at the center of theological reflection. Although the method has been contested in the past, it has made a powerful comeback during the papacy of Pope Francis.

A New Method for Theological Reflection

Latin American Catholic theology is characterized by its attention to social justice by the means of theological reflection. The emergence of the see-judge-act method, also known as the hermeneutical cycle, took place during and after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Aiming to renew and reinvigorate the Catholic Church from within, the Council emphasized “seeing the signs of the times” and responding to them in a credible way as a crucial task of the global Catholic Church in the face of modernity.

The method was originally developed by the Belgian Catholic father Joseph Cardijn (1882–1967) for the laity to exercise agency in Bible studies. The revision of life, as the hermeneutical cycle was titled, was a tool for laypeople to examine their own lives in light of the Scriptures. Particularly influential among the militant lay members of Catholic Action, a preeminent lay organization of the time, the method had arrived in Latin America as part of the structured lay culture of the mid-1900s.

The method boomed after the Second Vatican Council as local churches processed and interpreted the council’s teaching in their own cultural, political, economic, and social contexts. It became particularly influential in Latin America, where several local churches were facing the rule of dictators, political violence, and deeply structural poverty. In their conference in Medellín, Columbia, in 1968, the Latin American Bishops’ Conference (CELAM, Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano y Caribeño) officially adopted the method as its preferred framework for institutional theological reflection.

A Focus on Lived Experience

As a method of theological reflection, the hermeneutical cycle consists of three interdependent steps: seeing, judging, and acting. It is used to assess a circumstance or a situation of injustice, to which Christianity then provides an interpretative framework and a call for action for the religious community. The three-part analysis follows the established structure:

To see:

• What is happening?
• Why is it happening? What is it resulting from?
• What is caused by the events? Who is impacted, who gains, and who suffers the most under the circumstances?
• Who has the power to impact the course of events?
• Who is a subject and who is an object of the events?

To judge (in two parts):

– Social (or societal) assessment:

• Who is in power? What kind of power
• What kind of injustice is sustained by the circumstances?
• How is this connected to politics, the economy, and other societal factors?

– Theological assessment:

• What kind of interpretative frameworks do the Scriptures provide for assessing the injustice?
• What does the teaching and tradition of the Church provide us with to better understand the situation?
• What kind of new theologies/theological interpretations may emerge from seeing and judging the situation?

To act:

• What kind of action is required from the Church and the Christian people after seeing and judging the circumstances?
• What kind of action advances the Kingdom of God on Earth through the work of justice?
• Who is in a position of agency? Who and which groups of people can act to change the situation?
• How can the ideals be advocated for through institutions such as the state, political structures, and the economy?
• What are the changes concretely emerging from the action? What is altered because of employing the method?

As is evident from the questions above, the method places lived experience at the center of theological reflection. This includes the everyday life of the people and the surrounding society, including its structures that either maintain or challenge injustice. Whereas the European paradigm of Catholicism had placed a primary emphasis on judging, taking ahistorical dogma, the Scriptures, and ecclesial tradition as the frameworks to observe and assess lived experience, the Latin American method turned the focus around. Instead of highlighting the established teaching, lived experience was placed at the forefront of reflection and analysis. Scripture and church teaching were then used to understand lived experience, not the other way around. This contributed to a significant shift in the subjectivity and agency of theological reflection: it brought the religious subject – people in their daily realities – to the forefront of attention.

Despite the transformative power of such new ideas, liberation theology also faced criticism from within the Catholic world, as it was held to prioritize politics over spirituality

The method is closely linked with Latin American liberation theology. Emerging at the turn of the 1970s, liberation theology placed the lived experience of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed at the center of theological reflection. It addressed the crucial nexus of lived experience, structural issues, and institutional power by harnessing theology to work toward the ideals of social justice through institutional engagement. Despite the transformative power of such new ideas, liberation theology also faced criticism from within the Catholic world, as it was held to prioritize politics over spirituality, thus reducing religion to its social function, and foster too close of a connection with Leftist political ideas, including the use of Marxist analytical categories. In the early 1980s, liberation theology was officially criticized and rejected by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, headed by Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI, 2005–2013). Following a host of institutional measures, such as appointing only bishops who supported the Vatican’s stance, CELAM resigned from liberation theology and, hence, the use of the see-judge-act methodology as its preferred analytical framework at the turn of the 1990s.

Bringing the Method Back into Focus

The method reemerged to widespread attention in Latin American Catholicism in 2007 at the Fifth Conference of CELAM in Aparecida, Brazil. When seeing, judging, and acting was again defined as the methodological framework for theological reflection, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, later known as Pope Francis (2013–), was in charge of drafting the document that reintroduced the method. This time, the lived experience within the hermeneutical cycle included phenomena such as the local forms of Marian devotion, concerns for the Amazonian ecosystem, and the focus on missionary discipleship.

The method has since characterized not only Latin American Catholicism but also the papacy of Francis. It is noteworthy that, as a simultaneous development, the hermeneutical cycle has been adopted by local Catholic churches on other continents, in ecumenical work, and by other Christian churches, too: the statement on gender justice in 2013 by the Lutheran World Federation, for example, references the method as its preferred framework of reflection. Furthermore, with Pope Francis, who prioritizes lived experience over dogmatic rigidity, the see-judge-act method arrived at the top of the Catholic hierarchy and the center of the Vatican. This reflects also the shifting geographical, cultural, and theological dynamics in global Catholicism: a methodology associated with the Global South is, for now at least, mainstream in the Catholic world.

Kirjoittaja

Links and bibliography

Bingemer, Maria Clara (2016). Latin American Theology. Roots and Branches. Orbis Books.

Carriquiry, Guzmán (2002). Globalización e identidad católica de América Latina. México, D.F.: Plaza & Janés.

Documento conclusivo. V Conferencia general del episcopado latinoamericano y del Caribe. https://celam.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/5-conferencia-general-aparecida.pdf

Gutiérrez, Gustavo (1971). A Theology of Liberation. History, Politics, Salvation. Orbis Books.

Luciani, Rafael (2017). Pope Francis and the Theology of the People. Orbis Books.

Tombs, David (2002). Latin American Liberation Theology. Brill Academic Publishers.