This book is the first to investigate the problems that committed Catholics allegedly faced if they sought careers in state employment under the Third Republic in France. Using ministerial, Masonic, and ecclesiastical archives, including Vatican papers hitherto unused, it examines the factors underlying these discriminatory attitudes--notably the claims of Catholic involvement in the right-wing subversive activities of the late 1890s--while later chapters explore the degree to which these attitudes evaporated under later regimes, despite the traumas of the Vichy years.