The Faribault Plan

Come hear Professor Vern Rippley talk about the history of The Faribault Plan on Thursday, March 22!
The Faribault Plan was a formal effort to resolve the conflict between Catholic and public school educators over the content and control of the local schools. Conceived and sponsored by Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, the plan was an 1891-92 arrangement in the city of Faribault to provide publicly funded education to Catholic children in parish school buildings. As it came to be known nationally, the Faribault Plan got national attention when Archbishop Ireland spoke about the experiment at the 1890 meeting of the National Education Association held that year in St. Paul By shining the spotlight on his plan, Ireland, rather than gaining public support for the plan, instead precipitated a controversy among Catholic and lay educational leaders about the relationship between public and parochial education.

Many Catholic bishops were suspicious of Ireland and his efforts to work with the American public school establishment. At their annual conference in November 1891, the American archbishops discussed the merits of the Faribault Plan but failed to resolve their differences. Soon issues raised by the mix of church and state became front-page news in both the Catholic and the secular press in 1892. Responding to the outcry, Ireland implored his friend Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore for an appeal directly to Pope Leo XIII for top-down support of the Faribault Plan. Gibbons sent the pope a lengthy summary of the 1891 proceedings of the archbishops indicating there had been no formal rejection of the Ireland plan. After months of consideration, the pope merely acknowledged the school legislation formulated by the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore held in 1884 stating that Catholic children should be educated in Catholic schools if at all possible. Ducking the core issue, Pope Leo XIII merely noted at his conclusion that the Faribault Plan could be ‘tolerated.’
Rather than calming the waters, the pope’s message only stirred acrimony between the two sides. Tension sparked in the community over the use of nuns as teachers in the schools flared into a conflagration that ended the plan in 1892.

Dr. Vern Rippley is a professor of German at St. Olaf College, and his research on the Faribault Plan has been published in the US Catholic Historian.

The program will begin at 7:00pm. at the Rice County Historical Society Museum of History, 1814 NW Second Avenue, Faribault MN. Refreshments will be served following the program. Admission is $2.00 for non-members and FREE for members. Reservations are encouraged. Please contact the Rice County Historical Society at (507) 332-2121 with any questions.