EWTN News reports on the 50th anniversary celebration of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), an “ecumenical think tank” that engages public policy within a “Judeo-Christian moral framework.” The event, featuring New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and EPPC President Ryan Anderson, both Catholics, framed the organization as part of America’s “secret sauce” — a bulwark of “religious conservativism” against secular liberalism. Anderson explicitly grounded the EPPC’s mission in the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that rights come from the “Creator,” and described the think tank’s work as “intentionally ecumenical,” uniting Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic scholars to deploy “Jewish and Christian traditions” to contemporary questions. The article presents this as a commendable defense of moral order in the public square. What it reveals, however, is the complete capitulation of Catholic truth to the very religious indifferentism that the Church has consistently condemned — a surrender dressed up in the language of civic virtue and natural law, but which in practice denies the exclusive kingship of Jesus Christ and the unique salvific mission of His Church.
The “Judeo-Christian” Framework: A Direct Assault on the Unicity of the Catholic Church
The most glaring and theologically catastrophic element of this entire celebration is the explicit adoption of the “Judeo-Christian moral framework” as the EPPC’s guiding principle. This is not merely a diplomatic courtesy extended to non-Catholics; it is a doctrinal statement of the most dangerous kind. The Catholic Church has always taught, with the full weight of her infallible Magisterium, that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church (extra ecclesiam nulla salus), that the Old Covenant was fulfilled and superseded by the New Covenant in the Blood of Christ, and that the Jewish religion, insofar as it rejects the Messiahship and Divinity of Jesus Christ, is not a vehicle of salvation but a system of unbelief. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, proclaimed that Christ the King reigns over all men — not over “Judeo-Christian” peoples, but over all men, and that His 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 “Judeo-Christian” formulation, far from being a harmless cultural descriptor, is a heresy against the faith. It implicitly places the religion of Christ on the same plane as the religion of those who crucified Christ. It suggests that the revelation of Moses and the prophets stands alongside the revelation of the Incarnate Word as equally valid sources of moral authority for civil society. This is precisely the error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true,” and Proposition 16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation.” The EPPC’s framework does not merely tolerate this error — it institutionalizes it, making the “Judeo-Christian” synthesis the very foundation of its intellectual project.
Ryan Anderson, a Catholic, stands before an assembly of Jews, Protestants, and Catholics and declares that their “guiding lights” are “the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the natural law tradition, Western Civilization in general, and the American constitutional order in particular.” Let us be precise about what this means: the natural law tradition is placed on equal footing with Sacred Scripture, and the American constitutional order is placed on equal footing with Western Civilization. The hierarchy of truth is inverted. The supernatural revelation of God is reduced to one ingredient in a pluralistic moral stew. This is not Catholic social teaching; it is the liberal indifferentism that the Church has fought since the French Revolution.
Ecumenism as Apostasy: The “Intentionally Ecumenical” Program
Anderson proudly states that EPPC conducts its work in an “intentionally ecumenical way” as a community of Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic scholars. The word “intentionally” is crucial — this is not an accidental byproduct of collaboration but a deliberate program. And it is a program that stands in direct, irreconcilable opposition to the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church.
The Church has always taught that she alone is the true Church of Christ, that Protestantism is a false religion, and that the Jewish faith, insofar as it rejects Christ, is spiritually dead. Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned the proposition that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church” (Proposition 18). He further condemned the idea that “good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ” (Proposition 17). The First Vatican Council defined that the Church is a visible society, distinct from all other religious bodies, and that outside her there is no ordinary means of salvation.
What does it mean, then, for Catholic scholars to sit as equals with Jews and Protestants, developing policy based on “Jewish and Christian traditions”? It means that they have implicitly denied the exclusive truth-claims of the Catholic faith. It means that they treat the revealed religion of God as a matter of “tradition” — one among many — rather than as the only true religion. This is the very essence of the ecumenical heresy that has consumed the post-conciliar structures since John XXIII opened the windows to the world. The EPPC is not fighting secularism; it is capitulating to it by reducing Catholic truth to a “perspective” that can be harmonized with incompatible belief systems.
Ross Douthat, for his part, contrasts the American experience favorably with Western Europe, where “religious arguments don’t find any purchase” and “ethical norms are all basically utilitarian.” But Douthat’s own framework — the “Judeo-Christian” synthesis — is itself a product of the same liberal order he claims to oppose. The utilitarian secularism of Europe is not the opposite of religious indifferentism; it is its logical conclusion. When you tell men that all religions are equally valid paths to God, you have already told them that no religion is necessary. And when religion is no longer necessary, it is only a matter of time before it becomes irrelevant. The EPPC’s “ecumenical” project does not resist this trajectory; it accelerates it.
The Cult of the “Creator” and the Declaration of Independence: Naturalism Disguised as Theism
Anderson’s invocation of the Declaration of Independence — “all men are created equal, that we’re endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights” — is a masterclass in theological evasion. The Declaration’s “Creator” is not the God of Catholic revelation. It is the Deistic God of the Enlightenment — a distant, generic deity who endows men with rights but does not demand worship, obedience, or submission to a visible Church. This is the God of the Freemasons who authored the American founding documents, not the God who became man, founded a Church, and commanded all nations to be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned the proposition that “the best theory of civil society requires that popular schools open to children of every class of the people, and, generally, all public institutes intended for instruction in letters and philosophical sciences and for carrying on the education of youth, should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference, and should be fully subjected to the civil and political power at the pleasure of the rulers, and according to the standard of the prevalent opinions of the age” (Proposition 47). The American constitutional order, with its radical separation of Church and State, is precisely the realization of this condemned proposition. Anderson celebrates it as a “guiding light.” This is not Catholic social teaching; it is the Americanist heresy that Leo XIII condemned in Testem Benevolentiae — the error that the Church should adapt herself to the liberal democratic order rather than demanding that the state recognize the kingship of Christ.
The true Catholic position is articulated with crystalline clarity by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “If rulers and legitimate superiors will have the conviction that they exercise authority not so much by their own right as by the command and in the place of the Divine King, everyone will notice how religiously and wisely they will use their authority.” The EPPC does not call for this. It calls for Catholics to work within a system that was designed to exclude the public reign of Christ — and to call this system part of America’s “secret sauce.”
The Silence About the Most Holy Sacrifice and the Supernatural Life
Perhaps the most damning feature of this entire article is what it does not say. There is no mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There is no mention of the sacraments. There is no mention of the state of grace, of mortal sin, of the necessity of baptism, of the reality of hell, or of the final judgment. The “moral framework” of the EPPC is entirely naturalistic — concerned with “law, culture, and politics” but utterly silent about the supernatural order that is the raison d’être of the Catholic Church.
This silence is not accidental. It is the hallmark of the modernist mentality that St. Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane Exitu. The modernists, St. Pius X taught, reduce religion to a matter of “social action” and “ethical norms” while stripping it of its supernatural content. Proposition 65 of Lamentabili condemned the proposition that “contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.” The EPPC’s project is precisely this: a “dogmaless Catholicism” that can function as one voice in a pluralistic chorus, contributing “Catholic perspectives” to policy debates while never insisting on the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith or the necessity of the sacraments for salvation.
The article mentions programs in “bioethics, technology and human flourishing, and Catholic studies,” as well as the “Catholic Women’s Forum” and the “Life and Family Initiative.” These are laudable concerns in the abstract. But without the foundation of the true faith — without the Mass, without the sacraments, without the recognition that the Church alone has the authority to teach, govern, and sanctify — they are merely naturalistic activism wearing a Catholic mask. They are the “works” without the “faith,” and as St. Paul teaches, “if I have not charity, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). And charity, in the Catholic understanding, is not a vague benevolence toward all religions; it is the supernatural virtue that impels us to seek the conversion of all men to the one true Church.
The “Secret Sauce” of Apostasy: How the Conciliar Sect Serves the Antichrist’s Agenda
The EPPC’s 50th anniversary celebration is not an isolated event. It is a symptom of the systemic apostasy that has consumed the structures occupying the Vatican since the death of Pius XII. The “intentionally ecumenical” program, the “Judeo-Christian” framework, the celebration of the American constitutional order, the silence about supernatural truths — all of these are fruits of the conciliar revolution that began with John XXIII and has culminated in the reign of the current usurper, Leo XIV (Robert Prevost).
The post-conciliar sect has consistently pursued a policy of dialogue, collaboration, and synthesis with non-Catholic religions. The EPPC is simply the American Catholic expression of this global apostasy. Its scholars — Anderson, Weigel, Whelan, and the rest — are not defenders of the faith; they are managers of decline, seeking to preserve a “place” for Catholicism in a liberal order that is fundamentally hostile to the kingship of Christ. They do not demand that America recognize the Catholic Church as the one true Church. They do not call for the conversion of Jews or the return of Protestants to the fold. They do not insist on the social reign of Christ the King. Instead, they offer “Catholic perspectives” to a pluralistic conversation — and call this “bearing witness to the truth about the human person.”
But the truth about the human person is not a “perspective.” It is a dogma. Man is a creature made in the image and likeness of God, fallen through original sin, redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, and called to eternal salvation through the Catholic Church alone. Any “ethics” or “public policy” that does not begin and end with this truth is not Catholic — it is naturalism, and naturalism is the religion of the Antichrist.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus, warned that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” is an error to be condemned (Proposition 80). The EPPC has done exactly this — it has reconciled Catholicism with the liberal order, and it calls the result “America’s secret sauce.” The true Catholic response is not to seek a “place” within this order but to condemn it and to work for the restoration of the social reign of Christ the King — in America, in Europe, and throughout the entire world.
The faithful who wish to remain Catholic must reject the EPPC’s ecumenical project entirely. They must reject the “Judeo-Christian” framework as a denial of the unicity of the Church. They must reject the celebration of the American constitutional order as a form of the Americanist heresy. And they must return to the unchanging teaching of the pre-conciliar Magisterium — the teaching of Pius IX, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and all the true popes who understood that there is no “secret sauce” but the Cross of Jesus Christ, and no “guiding light” but the Light of the World, who said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
Source:
Ethics and Public Policy Center at 50: A part of America’s ‘secret sauce’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 04.05.2026