May 2026

The National Catholic Register reports that the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 30, 2026, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., with several hundred supporters and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat as keynote speaker. The article describes the EPPC as a “uniquely ecumenical think tank” that engages public policy “within the context of America’s historic Judeo-Christian moral framework.” Douthat praised the institution for “maintaining a place for a serious religious conservativism in American political discourse,” contrasting it favorably with Western Europe’s “suffocating secular-liberal consensus.” EPPC President Ryan Anderson, citing John Adams, called the think tank part of America’s “secret sauce,” affirming the Declaration of Independence’s proposition that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights.” Anderson emphasized that the EPPC’s guiding lights are “the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the natural law tradition, Western Civilization in general, and the American constitutional order in particular,” and that it operates in an “intentionally ecumenical way” as a community of Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic scholars. The article highlights the prominent role of Catholic scholars at the EPPC, listing numerous individuals in leadership positions and programs including bioethics, Catholic studies, the Catholic Women’s Forum, the Person and Identity Project, and the Life and Family Initiative. What the article entirely obscures is that this “ecumenical” framework, far from being a bulwark against secularism, is itself a manifestation of the very religious indifferentism and naturalism that the Church has consistently condemned, reducing the supernatural mission of the Catholic Church to a mere participant in a “Judeo-Christian” political project that leaves the Kingship of Christ and the obligation of the State to profess the true Faith entirely unaddressed.