I'm not saying my treatment of evangelii nuntiandi will be exhaustive, but I will be posting on sundry parts of it over the next days. It was written ten years or so after the close of Vatican II by Paul VI.
It starts out wonderfully, with a discussion of the Kingdom and salvation, which are rightly seen as the heart of Jesus' proclamation. Only then does Paul turn a discussion of the church and what was a quite evangelical document shows that it is in its heart quite Catholic (which is not a condemnation):
16. There is thus a profound link between Christ, the Church and evangelization. During the period of the Church that we are living in, it is she who has the task of evangelizing. This mandate is not accomplished without her, and still less against her.
It is certainly fitting to recall this fact at a moment like the present one when it happens that not without sorrow we can hear people - whom we wish to believe are well-intentioned but who are certainly misguided in their attitude - continually claiming to love Christ but without the Church, to listen to Christ but not the Church, to belong to Christ but outside the Church. The absurdity of this dichotomy is clearly evident in this phrase of the Gospel: "Anyone who rejects you rejects me."[44] And how can one wish to love Christ without loving the Church, if the finest witness to Christ is that of St. Paul: "Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her"?[45]
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