Discernment / Decision Making

Cardinal Joseph Cardijn's SEE-JUDGE-ACT method.

A simple method which helps us to stop, stand back from a situation and reflect on it before we jump in and take action. This process helps us to develop critical judgement about situations, events and structures. Often the three stages overlap and intermingle. 

The Practice

SEE

The SEE part requires that every member brings to the meeting, a ‘fact’ that he/

she will share with the rest of the group. A ‘fact’ is something that has happened

not imagined or predicted to happened and actually witnessed by a member. It

could be an incident, a remark overheard or an event witnessed by a member.

The member does not go looking for facts. The fact/s occurs in his normal day to

day living and working environment. This is called a person’s milieu. Every person

is involved with his ‘milieu of life’ and his/ her ‘milieu of work’.

The ‘milieu of life’ consists of all the various places and circumstances where the

member comes into contact with other people on a regular basis in living his daily

life. It could be the club where he hangs out after work, people he meets when he

goes to the market, people he meets or groups he may belong to in the parish or

the community, sports club or gym and so on. This is the ‘milieu of life’.

The other milieu that every member will be a part of and where he spends most

of his day is the ‘milieu of work’. Although the member may belong to a

workplace, be it a factory, office, shopping center and so on, he/ she does not

relate with everyone in the workplace equally. There is a group of people whom

he actually works with every day. His Immediate workmates or team. However,

during lunchtime, he/ she is always with another group of people. Then there is

clique of people he/ she meets everyday while waiting to take the bus every

morning. He could belong to a recreation club of the workplace where he has

another clique of friends or the union where he sometimes goes for a meeting

and he is close to a certain group of friends there. All this constitutes what we

call, ones ‘world of work’.

The ‘milieu of work’ and ‘milieu of life’ is very important to every member. This is

what we call his or her ‘sphere of influence’. This in the world is where you find

the people you can influence, change their attitudes or values. In this sense, you

are a leader. A leader is someone who has followers. These are the people whom

you will influence to follow you not because you have been elected as their leader

but because they are willing to follow your ideas, attitudes and values. This is

where you also find the facts to bring to your meeting.

The leader (you) needs to have a ‘keen sense of awareness’. He/ she is alive to

what is happening in one’s milieu and more importantly, what is happening in the

lives of the people in ones milieu. For this purpose, the leader earnestly tries to

enter into the lives of the people in ones milieu. This is a delicate undertaking and

some training on this could be helpful.

In deciding on whether to bring something one has seen, heard or experienced in

ones milieu, the key question to ask is ‘DOES THIS NEED LOOKING INTO?’

A fact is something a leader has seen, heard or experienced in one’s milieu. It

does not necessarily have to be a problem or bad incident. It could be just a

remark one overheard. For example, over tea time conversation, one of the

leaders friend commented that he has a big problem and does not know what to

do about it. He said that his 14 yr old son has been running away from school

often and the teachers want to see the parents about it. ‘What can I do? I beat

the hell out of him so many times and yet he continues to do it. What am I to tell

the teacher?’ Does this remark by the leaders fellow worker ‘needs looking into?’

The SEE-JUDGE-ACT is also what we call a ‘Review of Life’. It calls upon us to

review what is happening in the lives of our fellow workers or students. How do

we review a situation?

# We look at the cause of the situation. We need to find why the

student is running away from school? We don’t imagine the reasons. We actually

don’t know. So the first line of action at this point is to find out why the student is

running away from school. The group then helps the leader to strategize how he

is going to find this out from the student. You as a stranger simply cannot go and

ask him this question. You have to come up with a strategy on how to approach

him.

# We need to ask who are the various people involved in the sitauation. The

parents, the teachers, his friends, his parish (if he belongs to one)

# How many students are involved in this problem?

# We ask, what is the attitude of the people involved in the problem? What

are they saying? Here again, if we don’t know, we don’t suppose. We go and find

out.

# Finally, we ask ourselves, what are the consequences if nothing is done

about it?

JUDGE

When we say ‘leader’, we do not mean a political leader, a union leader, the

leader of a society and so on. We are talking about ‘Christian leadership and a

‘Christian leader’. Who is a Christian leader? If you want to know who is a

Christian leader, whom do we ask? Of course you have to ask Christ himself. How

does Christ describe the leader?

‘You are the light of the light of the world’……where there is darkness, you bring

light.

‘You are the salt of the earth’…….you bring taste/ richness to peoples dreary lives.

‘You are the leaven in the dough’…….you are not out there standing on a pedestal

but you are there ‘with them’ and ‘for them’ and you are immersed. You are ‘one

with them’.

You are the ‘sower’ who goes out to sow seeds. You understand that not every

seed you sow will take root. But you go out and sow anyway. You believe that

those that do, will yield a hundred fold.

You are the good shepherd. You are more concerned about the one sheep that is

lost and you will go all out to find it. I remember the case of a leader who

reported about one of his fellow workers who he came to know was ruining

himself and his family because of his gambling habit. He worked on him for a

quite a long time to turn him around and his team also helped him by giving him

ideas on what to do next. He was so happy with his new found life that he later

joined the team to help other people who were in the same situation as him.

This is why, we have ‘JUDGE’ after see because we are not social or political

leaders but we are Christian leaders and therefore we need to see ‘what Christ

would want us to do in a certain situation that we have seen to exist and we

believe ‘needs looking into’. This is where we may look into the bible to see what

Christ might have to say or we may even look into the teachings of the Church to

check what it has say about ‘human rights’ for example, if we are dealing with a

human rights issue.

ACT

To act is to ‘bear witness to the truth’. As Christian leaders, we are ‘called’ to bear

witness to the truth.

‘Not every one who calls me master, master is my servant. It is he who carries out

my will’.

‘For I was hungry and you gave me to eat ….’

Thirsty and you gave me to drink…

Naked and you clothed me…..

I was in prison and you visited me…..

Ignorant and you taught me the way…..

Distressed, and you came to my aid…..

He did not say ‘and you prayed for me’.

Our action starts when we go out and find out more about the fact or situation

being reviewed. Our action starts when we reach out to people and enter into

their lives and start to make the world a better place for them to live in.

Action sometimes calls for an effort to change people’s values and attitudes.

Action also sometimes goes beyond the current problem and looks at how to

prevent the situation or affect more people in the future.

In the case of the student who was running away from school, it was found that it

was because he could not keep up with school work because he had nobody to

help him as his parents could not afford to send him for tuition. The group in it’s

review also found out that there were many more students in the area who were

facing the same problem.

They worked with the students, parents, the school and the local parish and

organized free tuition classes with the help of volunteer teachers. Some were not

teachers but they could still teach as they were knowledgeable.

The parent of the student involved was so impressed that he joined the group and

later became an outstanding leader. He was not a Christian, but he fully

appreciated and accepted the teachings of Christ and practiced it in his life.

The Pastoral Spiral has four stages:

• Experience: Get in touch with feelings by immersing yourself in the experience 

• Analysis: Ask questions about the issue's causes, consequences, and key players 

• Theological reflection: Use Scripture and other documents to align your values with the will of God 

• Response: Use your learnings to plan actions that arise from God's activity 

The Pastoral Spiral is inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola. It's similar to the "See, Judge, and Act" method proposed by Cardinal Joseph Cardijn. 

The Pastoral Spiral emphasizes that the circle is not closed, and that you should make progress and come to a better vantage point. It's a spiral rather than a cycle because each action brings about new experiences, which call for further analysis, reflection, and action.