Interview

Catholics who know their faith well are not likely to be misled by New Age paganism . . .

Moira Noonan had been immersed in the New Age movement and its practices for 25 years before a remnant of truth from her Catholic school days made her take a second look at her life.

“I said, ‘Thank you, Sacred Heart nuns from second grade,’” recalled Noonan, author of Ransomed from Darkness: The New Age, Christian Faith and the Battle for Souls. “I had some shred of faith left after being completely brainwashed by the New Age mindset.”

Noonan’s foray into the New Age began in earnest when she sought treatment at a hypnosis clinic after an auto accident. It ended when she was told that the Blessed Virgin Mary was the “heaven goddess” who had come down to meet the “mother earth goddess.”

“My reaction was: There’s no way,” Noonan said, adding that she knew Mary was not a goddess. If this was a lie, she thought, “What else have I been taught that’s a lie?”

She started questioning everything she had embraced — religious science, hypnotherapy, clairvoyance, spiritual channeling, Reiki, crystals and more — and soon rejected it all before returning to the Catholic faith.

Since then, Noonan has been on a mission to warn Catholics about the dangers of dabbling in the New Age. Even a little New Age practice mixed with Catholicism can affect one’s attitude toward the faith, she said, leading to a superstitious rather than a sacramental life.

Others similarly concerned about the impact of the New Age agree that Catholics need to be wary, especially in today’s culture.

“The New Age permeates so much of what’s out there right now in just the popular literature,” said Fr. Leo Walsh, associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Whether it’s television documentaries on the Gnostic gospels, Oprah Winfrey promoting A Course in Miracles, yoga classes at fitness centers or Reiki treatments at retreat houses, Catholics are likely to encounter the New Age wherever they go.

Father Walsh, a business graduate who worked closely with personnel directors in his former career, said New Age thinking also has crept into organizational behavior through the use of motivational videos that promote self-actualization and releasing the “power of the inner self.” Businesses trying to help employees reach their full potential, thus improving company performance, may buy into such programs without realizing that the ideas they contain are not compatible with Christianity.

“Augustine said the joy of God is the human being fully alive,” Fr. Walsh said. “But for us, how you do that is very different.” The New Age approach is based on the idea that each of us is God and we need to release “the God within.” But, he added, “There is a distinction between releasing and becoming a human being fully alive and naming yourself as God.”

News Notes - SAN DIEGO’S LAY CATHOLIC NEWSPAPER
VOLUME 15, NUMBER 5

New Age Invasion Is This Spirituality Replacing Catholic Faith?
BY ROBERT KUMPEL

The First Commandment is "I am the Lord Thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me." But, according to one local convert from the New Age, San Diego Catholics who aspire to know their God better are some-times presented with information on strange gods instead.
Moira Noonan, , authored Ransomed From Darkness which tells the story of her conversion from New Age spirituality to the Catholic faith. Noonan believes most Catholics are being insidiously exposed to New Age ideas in the Church.
How long have you been a Catholic?
I finished RCIA about 10 years ago. Actually I was baptized Catholic and attended Catholic school as a little kid. NewAgers are constantly searching, always looking for something new. The first true — I hate to say it
— ‘enlightenment’ which dawned on me was that I didn’t want to be reincarnated. And I thought, "How do I get off this wheel of reincarnation?" I remembered something from when I was a [Catholic] kid about....."
North Bay Books is delighted to announce the publication of an important new book, Ransomed ham Darkness: The New Age Christian Faith and the Battle for SouL, by Moira Noonan. I am writing to propose that the author be considered for an appearance on your program.
Ransomed From Darkness is a memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood Christian faith, into the depths of the New Age movement and the occult, and her eventual redemption through the Church and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It has already been called a contemporary classic in the lirerature of spiritual warfare North Bay Books has published this work in hopes that it might serve two purposes: to evangelize those who have fallen away from the faith through the temptations of New Age practices; and to inform those in the Church about the hidden dangers of these practices.
Ransorned from Darkness has just been released, but has already been well received by a number of noteworthy readers, including Father John Hampsch, who wrote the Preface, Father Stan Fortuna, and Christian psychotherapist Marilyn Marshall. Their comments may be found on the back cover of the book.
We are Noonan is an experienced public speaker and has appeared a number of times on radio and television, on EWTN and regional broadcasts throughout the country, since her conversion in the late 1990s.

Click to view a printable version

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.