The operative core of the law is two sentences. The Republic assures liberty of conscience and guarantees the free exercise of worship, subject only to the restrictions enacted below in the interest of public order. The Republic does not recognise, salary or subsidise any religion.
Everything else follows from the second. The budget for religions was abolished, ending the salaries the state had paid to Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Jewish clergy since 1801. The ministry that had administered them was closed. Concordat appointments ceased, so the state lost any say in the nomination of bishops and gained no obligation toward them.
The property settlement was the hard part. Church buildings had been nationalised in 1789 and placed at the disposal of the clergy under the Concordat. The law transferred them to the state, the departments and the communes as owners, and provided that associations formed for the exercise of worship, the associations cultuelles, would hold and use them. Pius X rejected the associations in 1906 on the ground that lay controlled bodies would displace the hierarchy, and Catholic parishes therefore formed none. That left buildings with owners and no legal occupant, and a further law of 1907 resolved it by leaving them at the free disposal of the ministers and the faithful without a formal tenancy. The result, which surprises visitors, is that the French state owns and maintains almost every parish church and cathedral built before 1905 while subsidising no religion at all.