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A Distinction Without Separation
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the The Corporate State hub.
A Distinction Without Separation.
Project 2025 has a plan. It also has a religion. The movement engine behind the blueprint — Kevin Roberts, Leonard Leo, and their own words on church and state.
The architects of Project 2025 are bound to Opus Dei-led institutions and describe the fight as spiritual warfare — and the separation of church and state as a doctrinal error.
Graded on their own admissions and quotes (FACT). The larger trad-Catholic/evangelical alliance is our argument (SOME SMOKE), not a proven coalition.
“a distinction without separation, a union without confusion”
Kevin Roberts — architect of Project 2025 — has documented ties to Opus Dei-led institutions, including weekly mass by his own admission.
Heritage Foundation president Roberts acknowledged in a Sept. 2023 speech that for years he has attended weekly mass at the Catholic Information Center (headed by an Opus Dei priest). He led the John Paul the Great Academy (patron: Opus Dei founder Escriva) and was involved in an Opus Dei-affiliated Austin high-school leadership program. Reported as ties/spiritual affiliation — NOT membership, which is not publicly asserted. 'Radical' is the Guardian's word, attributed.
Leonard Leo called his opponents 'vile and amoral current day barbarians, secularists and bigots' who were 'under the influence of the devil.'
The Federalist Society co-chair and architect of the conservative Supreme Court supermajority said this in a 2022 speech accepting the Catholic Information Center's John Paul II New Evangelization award. His words, framed explicitly as spiritual warfare. We quote him rather than label him.
Project 2025: 100+ groups, an agenda against abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, the Department of Education, DEI, and reliable contraception — with a foreword by JD Vance.
The plan seeks to limit abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, dismantle the Department of Education, end diversity programs, and promote 'fertility awareness' over more reliable contraception. Vance, a Catholic convert, wrote the foreword to Roberts's book (orig. 'Burning Down Washington…', retitled, postponed Aug. 2024). Trump ties: authored largely by ex-Trump officials, but his campaign publicly disavowed it — noted together.
Traditionalist Catholics and evangelicals have converged on one governing project — an alignment, our argument, not a proven coalition.
Theologian Massimo Faggioli places Opus Dei within a U.S. conservative/traditionalist Catholic movement that sees 'woke ideology' as 'fundamentally changing the nature of America, western civilization and Christianity,' aligned with the broader evangelical right on Project 2025. Graded SOME SMOKE: a documented convergence of agenda and rhetoric, offered as analytical thesis — not a membership roster.
Why it matters.
The Corporate State hub documents a project to staff and run the government like a company on a foundation of professed natural hierarchy. This is the moral engine of that project. When the men building the blueprint describe the separation of church and state as a doctrinal error, and cast opponents as barbarians under the influence of the devil, the anti-DEI, anti-contraception, anti-Education-Department planks stop reading as disconnected preferences and start reading as one program with a theological spine. We stop short of calling it theocratic in our own voice — and put their words on the record instead.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenThe exact name of the Austin high-school program and the specific Opus Dei-affiliated site carrying the 'distinction without separation' language.
- OpenDocumentable touchpoints — shared funding, institutions, joint campaigns — that would move the Catholic-evangelical alliance from thesis toward established coalition.
- OpenThe lobbying/funding record linking Leo's network and Roberts's Heritage to the drafting of Project 2025's religious-agenda planks.