Let me process the article thoroughly:
**[Antichurch] Pentecost Rhetoric Without the Cross: A Nigerian “Bishop” Invokes the Holy Spirit While Ignoring the Social Kingship of Christ**
ACI Africa reports that a figure occupying the title of “Bishop” of Oyo, Nigeria, Emmanuel Adetoyese Badejo, issued a Pentecost message calling on Christians to invoke the Holy Spirit against violence, kidnapping, and hatred in Nigeria, urging believers to reject “unchristian rhetoric of vengeance” and embrace “the language of Pentecost: unity and love.” The message, while superficially invoking Christian language, is a masterclass in conciliar reductionism — stripping the Faith of its supernatural, doctrinal, and social content, replacing it with a horizontal, naturalistic program indistinguishable from secular humanitarianism.
The Pentecost of the Conciliar Sect: A Descent Without the Holy Spirit
The message begins with a seemingly pious reflection on the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles. Badejo quotes Acts 2:4 — “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak different languages as the Spirit gave them power to express themselves” — and declares that Pentecost “repaired the damage caused by human self-centeredness at the Tower of Babel.” He continues: “The Holy Spirit united the world in one language of love.”
This is not Catholic theology. This is the theology of the post-conciliar sect dressed in Pentecostal costume. The Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles not to unite “the world” in a vague “language of love,” but to establish the Church — a visible, hierarchical, supernatural society with the mission of teaching all nations, baptizing them, and commanding them to observe all that Christ commanded (Mt 28:19-20). The unity wrought by the Pentecost was not a sentimental horizontal unity of all peoples, but the vertical unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, united under the Vicar of Christ and the bishops in communion with him.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught with clarity that Christ’s kingdom “extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The reign of Christ is not a “language of love” — it is a juridical, doctrinal, and social reality demanding the submission of every soul, every family, and every state to the laws of God and His Church.
Badejo’s Pentecost is emptied of all dogmatic content. There is no mention of the depositum fidei, no mention of the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, no mention of the sacraments as the ordinary means of grace, no mention of the reality of sin, hell, or the Last Judgment. The Holy Spirit becomes a vague force for social cohesion — indistinguishable from the “spirit of the world” that St. Paul warns against (1 Cor 2:12).
The Omission of the Supernatural: A Message Without Doctrine
The most damning feature of this message is not what it says, but what it systematically omits. Nigeria faces existential crises: banditry, insurgency, kidnappings, interreligious violence — realities that have seen thousands of Catholics murdered, churches burned, and faithful driven from their homes. The proper Catholic response to such evils is threefold: first, the preaching of the Gospel and the conversion of infidels and heretics to the one true Faith; second, the defense of the social Kingship of Christ and the establishment of Catholic order in society; third, the offering of the Most Holy Sacrifice and the reception of the sacraments for the sanctification of souls and the propitiation of God’s justice.
Badejo does none of this. His message contains:
No mention of the necessity of conversion to the Catholic Church. Nigeria is a land where millions practice Islam and animism. The Catholic response to religious pluralism is not “unity and love” but the missionary mandate of Christ: “Going therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). The Church has always taught extra Ecclesiam nulla salus — outside the Church there is no salvation. This dogma, defined by the Fourth Lateran Council and reiterated by countless popes, is the very foundation of the missionary enterprise. Badejo’s call for “unity” without conversion is the false ecumenism condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos and by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis.
No mention of the social Kingship of Christ. Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely to remind rulers and peoples that Christ’s authority extends over all nations and all aspects of civil society. Badejo calls on public officials to “use their position and power to secure lives and property” — a purely naturalistic appeal that could come from any secular NGO. He does not call on them to recognize the sovereignty of Christ the King, to govern according to Catholic principles, to submit their authority to the Church’s teaching, or to enact laws in conformity with divine law. The state, in Badejo’s vision, is not subject to Christ — it is merely asked to be more efficient.
No mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In a country where Catholics are being slaughtered, where the faithful are terrorized, where the very survival of the Church is at stake — not a single word about the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass, the only true remedy for sin and the source of all grace. The Mass is the re-presentation of Calvary, the unbloody immolation that applies the merits of Christ to souls. It is the center of Catholic life and the most powerful spiritual weapon available. Badejo’s silence on this point is not an oversight — it is a theological statement. The conciliar sect has replaced the Mass with the “assembly,” the propitiatory sacrifice with the “meal,” and the priesthood of the ordained minister with the “priesthood of the faithful.” Badejo’s message reflects this liturgical revolution perfectly.
No mention of the sacraments as necessary for salvation. There is no call to confession, no exhortation to receive Holy Communion worthily, no reminder that sanctifying grace is obtained through the sacramental system established by Christ. The “Holy Spirit” of Badejo operates independently of the sacramental economy — a theology that would have been recognized as heretical by the Council of Trent.
“Stop These Nonsense Prayers”: The Bishop Who Condemns the Faithful
Perhaps the most revealing passage in the entire message is Badejo’s condemnation of Catholics who pray for the destruction of their enemies: “People who are praying like this are pagans and are telling us that there is no spirit of God in our churches or in the world. Stop these nonsense prayers and begin to speak the language of the Pentecost: unity and love.”
This is extraordinary. Catholics throughout the ages — including the saints, the prophets of the Old Testament, and the Church herself in her official liturgy — have prayed for the destruction of the enemies of God and His Church. The imprecatory psalms (e.g., Psalm 68: “Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered; and let them that hate Him flee from before His face”) are divinely inspired. The Church’s traditional liturgy includes prayers for the conversion of enemies, but also prayers for the confusion and defeat of those who persecute the Faith. The Collect for the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel asks God to cast Satan and the wicked spirits into hell. The Asperges Me invokes divine purification.
Badejo does not distinguish between prayers for the just punishment of the wicked (which are Catholic) and prayers motivated by personal vengeance (which are sinful). He condemns the entire category as “pagan” and “nonsense.” This is the conciliar mentality in its purest form: any expression of spiritual combat, any recognition of the reality of demonic warfare, any acknowledgment that there are enemies of God who must be defeated — all of this is dismissed as primitive, un-Christian, and incompatible with the “language of love.”
The Council of Trent taught that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice offered for the sins of the living and the dead — including for the punishment of sins and the confusion of the enemies of the Church. The traditional rite of exorcism explicitly commands demons to depart. The entire tradition of Catholic spiritual warfare — from St. Michael’s battle against Lucifer to the Church’s prayers against heretics and persecutors — is swept away by Badejo’s sentimental humanitarianism.
The “Fruits of the Spirit” Without the Cross
Badejo references St. Paul’s list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23 — “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control” — and contrasts them with “violence, evil, and war.” He adds: “Remember how Jesus Christ forgave the world on the cross. This is what it means to be born again and to create a better world.”
This is a gross distortion of the mystery of the Cross. Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary was not a lesson in conflict resolution — it was the propitiatory offering of the God-Man for the sins of the world, satisfying divine justice and meriting the grace of redemption. The Cross is simultaneously an act of infinite love and an act of infinite justice. Christ forgave His enemies, yes — but He also declared: “You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell?” (Mt 3:7). He drove the money changers from the temple with a whip. He pronounced woes upon the Pharisees. He warned of eternal fire.
The “forgiveness” that Badejo preaches is the forgiveness of the conciliar sect — a forgiveness without justice, without repentance, without conversion, without satisfaction. It is the forgiveness of Dignitatis Humanae, the conciliar declaration on religious freedom that effectively proclaimed that error has rights and that the Church has no duty to suppress false religions. It is the forgiveness that leaves the structures of sin intact, that refuses to name evil as evil, that substitutes “dialogue” for doctrine and “encounter” for evangelization.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). Badejo’s message is precisely this reconciliation — with the modern world’s values of tolerance, pluralism, and conflict avoidance, all dressed in the language of Pentecost.
The “Pentecost Outreach”: Evangelization Reduced to Social Media
Badejo’s most concrete pastoral recommendation is his call for young people to “evangelize and catechize the social media” not just by being present on them but by transforming them with good news, which he describes as the “Pentecost Outreach.”
This is the conciliar understanding of evangelization in miniature. Evangelization is not the preaching of the Gospel — the kerygma of Christ crucified, the call to repentance, the demand for baptism and submission to the Church. Evangelization is “transforming social media with good news.” The “good news” is not the news of salvation through Christ and His Church — it is the news of peace, unity, love, and human dignity. It is the gospel of the United Nations, the gospel of the World Economic Forum, the gospel of the Antichrist — a gospel without the Cross, without the sacraments, without the Church, without God.
The Church’s understanding of evangelization was defined with precision by St. Pius X in Pascendi and Lamentabili. The purpose of the Church’s mission is not to make the world a more pleasant place to live — it is to save souls from eternal damnation and to establish the social Kingship of Christ. The Church does not “engage” with the world on the world’s terms — she confronts the world with the demands of the Gospel, calling all men to conversion and all nations to submission to Christ the King.
The Language of Babel, Not Pentecost
In the end, Badejo’s message is not the language of Pentecost — it is the language of Babel. At Babel, human beings were united in pride and self-centeredness, and God confounded their language. At Pentecost, God restored unity — but it was the unity of the Catholic Church, the unity of truth, the unity of the sacraments, the unity of the apostolic hierarchy.
The unity that Badejo preaches is the unity of the world — a unity that transcends doctrine, that embraces all religions, that refuses to distinguish between truth and error, between the Church and the world, between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of the age. This is the unity of the ecclesia progressiva, the unity of the conciliar revolution, the unity of the abomination of desolation sitting in the holy place.
The true language of Pentecost is the language of Peter on the day of Pentecost — the language that proclaimed Jesus Christ as Lord and Messiah, that called the Jews to repentance and baptism, that cut them to the heart and brought three thousand souls into the Church in a single day (Acts 2:36-41). It is the language of the martyrs who confessed Christ before kings and governors. It is the language of the saints who converted nations, overthrew idols, and established the social reign of Christ.
Until the legitimate successors of the apostles — those who hold the Faith of all ages and refuse the conciliar apostasy — are recognized and obeyed, messages like Badejo’s will continue to pour forth from the structures occupying the Vatican: messages that invoke the Holy Spirit while denying His work, that preach love while abandoning truth, that call for peace while refusing the only Prince of Peace His rightful throne.
Source:
Bishop urges Christians in Nigeria to speak ‘the language of Pentecost’ amid insecurity (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 26.05.2026