The Archdiocese of Jos and the Denial of Christ the King
The cited article from EWTN News/Aci Africa reports on a deadly attack on Palm Sunday in Nigeria’s Jos Archdiocese, leaving at least 11 dead. Archbishop Matthew Ishaya Audu, while expressing grief, cautions against unverified reports and refrains from attributing religious motives, urging prayer and unity. His statements, framed in the naturalistic and evasive language of the post-conciliar church, reveal a profound theological and pastoral bankruptcy. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this response is not merely inadequate but constitutes a betrayal of the Church’s divine mandate to proclaim the exclusive reign of Christ the King over all nations and to denounce the errors that inspire such violence.
Factual Deconstruction: The Omission of Religious Persecution
The article presents the attack as a generic act of violence by “suspected gunmen” on “unsuspecting civilians.” Archbishop Audu explicitly states: “I don’t know what it is” regarding rumors of a post-fast attack on Christians, and he “refrained from attributing the violence to religious motives despite circulating rumors.” This is a deliberate omission. In a region with a history of “communal and ethno-religious violence,” as the article notes, and where Christians are frequently targeted by Islamist militants (e.g., Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen), the default Catholic response must be to investigate and, if evidence supports it, condemn attacks on the faithful as persecution. The Archbishop’s agnosticism on motive, however, aligns with the modernist principle of *indifferentism* condemned by Pope Pius IX in the *Syllabus of Errors* (Propositions 15-18). It treats all religions as morally equivalent and refuses to acknowledge the specific hatred of the Catholic Faith, thereby whitewashing the anti-Christian ideology behind the violence.
Linguistic Analysis: The Tone of Bureaucratic Neutrality
The language employed is characteristic of the conciliar sect’s diplomatic corps. Phrases like “rely on verified information amid conflicting reports,” “unverified figures circulating, particularly on social media,” and “I don’t want to add more problems to what we already have” reveal a mindset prioritizing social stability and conflict avoidance over prophetic witness. This is the language of a corporate manager, not a successor of the Apostles. It contrasts starkly with the unflinching denunciations of error by pre-1958 pontiffs. Pope Pius IX, in the *Syllabus*, thundered against the error that “the civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Prop. 41) and that “it is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them” (Prop. 63) when such rebellion serves anti-Catholic ends. The Archbishop’s silence on the religious identity of the victims and the likely religious identity of the perpetrators is a practical endorsement of the secularist principle that religion is a private matter, not a public good to be defended by the state—a principle anathematized by Pius IX.
Theological Confrontation: Christ the King vs. Modernist Relativism
The Archbishop’s call to “pray” and his reflection that “the cross is only a way to the Resurrection” are presented as spiritual comfort, divorced from any call to doctrinal or social action in defense of the Faith. This is a direct contradiction of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical *Quas Primas*, instituted precisely to combat the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism.” Pius XI declared that the feast of Christ the King was necessary to remind “states that not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” He warned that when “God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The Archbishop, by not demanding that the civil authority recognize its duty to protect the Church and punish those who attack it, implicitly accepts the secularist separation of Church and State condemned in the *Syllabus* (Prop. 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”). His prayer is reduced to a personal pietism, not a weapon for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ.
Symptomatic Analysis: The Fruit of the Conciliar Apostasy
This incident is a microcosm of the systemic failure of the post-1958 hierarchy. The Archbishop operates within the “conciliar sect,” a structure that has exchanged the *Militant* Church for a “dialogue” with the world. His refusal to identify the attack as religiously motivated stems from the Vatican II document *Nostra Aetate* and its aftermath, which fosters religious indifferentism and forbids the Church from “singling out” any religion for criticism, even when that religion actively persecutes Catholics. This is the “ecumenical” spirit that the *Syllabus* condemned as an error (Prop. 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State”). Furthermore, his caution about “adding more problems” echoes the modernist clerical cowardice St. Pius X railed against in *Pascendi Dominici Gregis* and *Lamentabili Sane Exitu*. Modernists, he wrote, “under the guise of more serious criticism… aim at such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption.” Here, the “development” is the corruption of the Church’s duty to be a *sign of contradiction* (Luke 2:34) into a mere humanitarian agency concerned with “peace” in a naturalistic sense, devoid of the supernatural kingdom of Christ.
God’s Law vs. Humanist Relativism
The article’s underlying assumption is that the primary duty of a Catholic bishop in the face of violence is to calm tensions and promote “unity,” defined as social harmony. This is a capitulation to the naturalistic humanism condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, Props. 56-59) and Pius XI (*Quas Primas*). The Archbishop’s statement, “Let them pray… That is what we need now,” replaces the clear teaching of the Church that public penance and reparation are required for public sins, and that the state has a grave obligation to punish wrongdoing and protect the common good, which includes the free practice of the true religion. Where is the demand for the governor, “Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang,” to publicly acknowledge the victims as *martyrs of the Faith* if they were killed for being Catholics? Where is the reminder that his authority comes from God and must be exercised in service to the *only true religion* (Syllabus, Prop. 21)? The governor’s pledge to “pursue justice” is framed in purely civil, secular terms, and the Archbishop offers no corrective, no reminder that true justice is rooted in the Divine Law and the Ten Commandments, the first three of which demand the honor and defense of the One True God.
Critique of the Conciliar Clergy
Archbishop Audu is a product and agent of the neo-church. His title, “Archbishop of Jos,” is used with quotation marks because it refers to a jurisdiction within the conciliar sect, which has no legitimate authority from Christ. His evasive language is not a pastoral prudence but a sign of his apostasy. He embodies the “clergy” of the “abomination of desolation” spoken of by Daniel (Matt. 24:15), who stand in holy places but preach a gospel of natural peace, not the supernatural kingdom of Christ. His failure to condemn the attack as an assault on the Body of Christ, his refusal to see it through the lens of the ongoing war between the Seed of the Woman and the Seed of the Serpent (Gen. 3:15), demonstrates that he does not possess the *mind of the Church* (1 Cor. 2:16) but the mind of the world. He is guilty of the sin of omission, withholding the full truth of the Faith from his flock in their moment of trial, thereby leading them into a false sense of security and a depoliticized, privatized “spirituality” that is utterly powerless against the forces of anti-Christ.
Conclusion: The Call to Integral Catholicism
The Palm Sunday attack in Jos is a stark reminder that we are in the era of the “great apostasy” foretold by St. Paul (2 Thess. 2:3). The response of Archbishop Audu is not an anomaly but the norm for the hierarchy of the conciliar sect. It is the logical outcome of a church that has embraced the errors of *Nostra Aetate*, *Dignitatis Humanae*, and the entire Vatican II revolution. The only authentic Catholic response is that which Pius XI demanded in *Quas Primas*: the public confession that “Jesus Christ is King” not just in private devotion, but in the laws, constitutions, and public life of nations, and the unwavering defense of the Church’s right and duty to exist and operate freely in society. The faithful must abandon these modernist shepherds and cling to the unchanging Faith, praying for the restoration of the true hierarchy and the public triumph of Christ the King, who will “strike the nations” and “rule them with a rod of iron” (Apoc. 19:15).
Source:
Palm Sunday attack in Nigeria’s Jos Archdiocese leaves 11 dead, curfew imposed (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 30.03.2026