I check the site Where Peter Is every so often. A voice of sanity in the Catholic blogosphere. A balm to the “Qatholic” alternative, as another gorilla blogger likes to term it.
Mike Lewis wrote of Bishop Barron’s visit to the virtual Napa. I was struck by this transcription. Struck, but not surprised:
But the three major players of Vatican II, Pope Francis canonizes. I think it’s fair to say the one he identifies with the most is Saint Paul VI. I’ve heard Pope Francis say this a number times: he thinks the greatest teaching document after the council was Evangelii nuntiandi, the greatest, most influential of the teaching documents.
Amen. Alleluia.
As a liturgist and a progressive, let me state a few ideological heresies:
- Sex has been a post-conciliar rabbit hole.
- Liturgy has been a post-conciliar rabbit hole.
The culturewar, it goes without saying, likewise.
I don’t think that Evangelii Nuntiandi has been the most influential of the post-conciliar Vatican oeuvre. But it should have been. That it has yet to be so, is a serious fault of Roman Catholicism, conservative and liberal and in-between.
These days, it remains a source of personal dissatisfaction and discomfort we have yet to realize the grandeur of the mission before us. We seem so impoverished fussing on the peripherals.
Catholic Sensibility 
Evangelii Nuntiandi may not have been one of the most influential post-Vatican II papal documents for the US but it has been very important for Latin America. I remember a very radical Spanish missionary in El Salvador telling me in 1987 that this was one of the most important documents for pastoral work. This was during the Salvadoran civil war and the priest worked in a very poor barrio of the city of San Salvador and was very connected with the “popular church.”
This is heartening to hear. Reading and studying it eight years ago was a big eye-opener for me. Changed the direction and context of my ministry.