Free Lectures - How Are Popes Elected?

The Teaching Company is offering free lectures to all comers:

How Are Popes Elected? Two Complimentary Lectures

Welcome, Friend of The Teaching Company.

We are pleased to present two complimentary lectures on the history and workings of papal elections: “How to Elect a Pope” and “Papal Elections: Then and Now.” These lectures are presented by Professor Thomas F. X. Noble, the Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. These lectures were first commissioned by The Teaching Company last year and reflect Dr. Noble's research interest in the history of Rome and the papacy.

We offer free lectures to our customers at various times throughout the year as part of our goal to provide a lifelong learning experience.

You may listen to these lectures at your computer by choosing to "stream" them, or you may download them to listen on your computer without being attached to the Internet. You may also burn them to a CD or load them on a portable listening device if you download them.

You may access your free lectures online. Please feel free to send the link to the lectures to any friends of yours who might also enjoy them. The lectures are free for them as well.

As always, thank you for being our customer.

Tom Rollins
President and CEO
The Teaching Company

P.S. A note on timing. We had planned to send these lectures the week of March 28, 2005, for some time. After the collapse of John Paul II's health on Thursday, March 31, I considered withholding these lectures out of respect for the pope. After much reflection, I believe that sending the lectures is appropriate, even at this hour. You will hear much on papal succession in coming weeks, but little of it will offer the detail and depth of historical perspective contained in these two lectures. In the end, I decided that the better service to our customers, perhaps especially our Catholic customers, would be to send the lectures. A papal succession is an extraordinary moment in history, continuing the longest surviving human institution of government. John Paul II has made important changes in the process, and would, I hope, want us to help it be understood.

I haven't listened to these yet, but the lectures that I have bought from The Teaching Company have been quite good.