The Evolution of Secularism in France: Between Two Civil Religions

This book investigates the problems that committed Catholics allegedly faced if they sought careers in state employment under the Third French Republic. Using ministerial and Masonic archives, the book explores the broad divergence of practice between individual ministries and between particular governments. It also examines the factors that underlay these discriminatory attitudes - notably the claims of Catholic involvement in the right-wing subversive activities of the late 1890s at the time of the Dreyfus affair. It investigates the increased difficulties that French Catholics faced after the change of pope in 1903. Later chapters explore the degree to which wariness towards committed Catholics in the public services evaporated under later regimes - despite the traumas of the Vichy years.