Ransomed From Darkness

By June Klins

   “Ignorance is bliss,” the saying goes. One person who will tell you that is not true is Moira Noonan, a former Religious Science minister, psychic counselor and therapist, who was ransomed from darkness to the true Light of Jesus Christ through His Mother.

   Moira Noonan spoke at the Medjugorje Conference at Notre Dame on May27, 2007. She began her talk with the St. Michael prayer, a prayer she says frequently. She witnessed her conversion story and warned of the dangers of the New Age movement. According to www.beliefnet.com, New Age is “an umbrella term for a wide range of personal and individual beliefs and practices influenced primarily by Eastern religions, paganism, and spiritism.”  Moira Noonan describes New Age as “a display of power rather than a call to love. People are motivated by the prospect of having their wishes fulfilled, rather than by a sense of surrender to God’s Will.” Several times in her talk, she referred to the “holy trinity” of New Age as “me, myself and I.”  God is seen as an impersonal life force rather than a personal God with whom we have a relationship.

   Moira was brought up as a Catholic in California, but abandoned her faith at age 15. When she went away to boarding school, a teacher there introduced her to Eastern religions, reincarnation and transcendental meditation. Years later she would be lured into the world of spiritism after a car accident left her in chronic pain. Her insurance company sent her to a pain clinic where they took away all pain killers and gave her a series of messages that were anti-Christian. The messages condemned any acceptance of suffering as redemptive. She called it “professional brainwashing.”  She says, “My insurance company paid for me to get into the occult.”  The pain clinic encouraged  the patients to join “New Thought” churches such as such as Unity and Religious Science, Christian Science and Unitarian. Moira fell prey to all their ideas and, after 4 years of “seminary,” became a minister in the church of Religious Science. She became certified in hypnotherapy, and developed expertise in past-life regression, astrology, the Course in Miracles, Reiki, channeling, crystals, clairvoyance and other occult practices. Moira did not realize at the time that “through this kind of thinking, demon spirits inflate the ego, sometimes to the point that we believe we are creator gods.” This kind of thinking breaks the First Commandment, and soon all the others. She also did not realize that spirit guides, demon spirits can give you signs, wonders and miracles, but these signs are an encouragement for PRIDE. Although she did not elaborate in her talk about the darkness she wrestled with during these years, she did write about it in her book, Ransomed From Darkness. .

   One day Moira was reading a magazine called “New Age Journal” and there was an article in there by a leader in the New Age movement who went to Medjugorje. She said that Our Lady was a “goddess” and that She was coming to Earth to see the “Earth goddess.”  As soon as Moira read that, she knew this was wrong. (She credited the nuns from second grade with the shred of Catholicism she had left.) She prayed a simple prayer, “Mother Mary, I know You’re not a goddess. I know this article is not true, but if You are coming to Earth in any way, shape or form, I’d really like to meet You.” 

   Little by little, Our Lady answered that prayer. One evening at a table tipping session (where they would call on spirits to move objects around) Moira felt a presence of something beautiful and angelic. She wondered about it, and an interior voice answered, “I am the Queen of Peace.”

   In July, 1991, “Life” Magazine wrote about the miracles of Medjugorje. Soon after Moira read the magazine, she turned on the TV and it just happened that Joan Rivers was interviewing two priests and author Michael Brown about Medjugorje. Joan Rivers was holding a rosary that had turned gold.

   By this point Moira was really intrigued and wanted to know more. Her babysitter’s mother, who was Catholic, led her to a Catholic bookstore, where she and another spiritism minister walked in on a talk about Medjugorje. After the talk, a Bible class began, but Moira and her friend thought they knew everything about the Bible, so they left and went to the beach. Her friend pulled out her crystal pendulum, which is something New Agers carry to channel spirit guides for spiritual direction. Although Moira did not know at the time, she now proclaims, “Of course, it’s demonic – false locutions, counterfeit gifts, not from the Holy Spirit.”  Her friend could not get the pendulum  to work, so she asked Moira to do it. As Moira went to reach for it, there was an invisible wall between her hand and the pendulum, and she could not touch it. And at the same moment she could see a beautiful white rosary over her hand, and she heard a very sweet interior voice say, “Pray the Rosary for your prayers to be answered.”  She told her friend, “I’m not allowed to touch that pendulum or any pendulum ever again.”  They wondered about where to get a rosary, so they went back to the Catholic bookstore. A lady at the bookstore gave Moira a copy of the “Pieta” prayer book, where there is an explanation of how to pray the Rosary. This same lady told Moira about a priest in Scottsdale, Arizona who took groups of pilgrims to Medjugorje.

   Before long, Moira enticed a vanload of people to go to Arizona  to the site of  the “UFO’s”  (Moira called this place the “New age Capital of the World”) and planned to stop at the church in Scottsdale in the same trip. Moira arrived as Mass was going on. It was her first Mass in almost 30 years and everything seemed so foreign to her. She stood up, while everyone else was sitting, and prayed, “Lord Jesus, if this priest is from You, give me a sign right now or I’m leaving and I’m never coming back.” Immediately, right above the priest’s head, she saw the face of Jesus, with His crown of thorns, blood dripping down, similar to how He looked in “The Passion of the Christ.” She heard an interior voice speak with authority, “This is my son. He is my disciple. Sit down. You are home.”  At Communion time, as she sat in the pew, all the sins of her past life flashed through her head like a movie. At the same time God’s grace came through and she remembered one of the great gifts Jesus gave to the Church - the sacrament of Confession! After Mass she went to look for the priest and found him in the parking lot. She began her first confession in 30 years right there in the parking lot!  After 25 minutes, Father asked her to return the next day to finish. The next day he told her to go back to California and get a spiritual director at the Benedictan monastery. The priest she got was from India and knew all about how she had been transformed by the Eastern religions. He took her through 3 years of healing of memories. Since that time many people have come to the faith or come back to the faith through her, including an Oriental Medicine doctor who practiced Tibetan Buddhism!

   Several years later Moira finally made the trip to Medjugorje. She waited 6 hours in line to go to confession there, and then spent 2 more hours in the confessional. The priest told her that he wanted to see her in his office the next day. He told her he was approved by Pope John Paul II as an exorcist and asked her if she would be willing to have an exorcism. She agreed. It took 16 hours for the exorcism. She was finally ransomed completely from darkness !

   Moira ended her talk with the Hail Mary “in honor of Our Lady who cries for Her lost children.”  The spirit of New Age seeks the ruin of souls. Let us pray for people who are involved in these practices. As Moira says, they are actually looking for the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, but are looking in the wrong places. She adds that Christians need to be vigilant. Ignorance is NOT bliss.

Editor’s note: Moira is the author of Ransomed From Darkness: The New Age, Christian Faith, and the Battle for Souls. She is available to speak for your group or parish. You can contact her through her website, www.spiritbattleforsouls.org.

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