The chapter starts by examining the backlash among Orangemen in the Border Counties to Éire’s 1948 unilateral decision to leave the British Commonwealth and become a republic. Coming to terms with the new constitutional reality was traumatic, and adaptation was not facilitated by the Catholic hierarchy, which was in full crusading mood against domestic heresy and foreign communism. The chapter examines a few high-profile cases – including the 1956 Hungarian refugees episode and the 1957 Fethard-on-Sea Boycott – and explores the mix of complacency, insecurity and resignation with which both Jews and Protestants responded to the mounting intolerance of the church hierarchy. An age of anxieties, the 1950s was also an age of extremes for the Irish minorities. Just when they seemed to be at their lowest ebb, supine under clerical dictation, while the Orange Order was fighting and losing old peripheral battles, Irish civil society came to the rescue and liberal opinion started to question traditional deference to Catholic power.