My Conversion Story
by Moira Noonan
My earliest memories of Catholicism was my mother saying that she sent us (my brothers and sisters) to Catholic School so the nuns could raise us because they did a better job than she did. The first school I went to was in Detroit for kindergarten, a Sacred Heart Convent School in the order of St. Madeline Sophie. By the time I was in third grade we had moved from Detroit to New Jersey where I had attended public school due to lack of a Catholic School in that area. By eight grade I was sent away to boarding school in Philadelphia called Eden Hall, the Sacred Heart Convent, when I was in tenth grade the school suffered a fire and burnt down.
I was transferred to a secular college-prep boarding school called MacDuffie School for Girls. This transition placed a real damper on my faith journey. This non-Catholic environment started me out on the dangerous path into the New Age World. One of my teachers, in her twenties, had befriended me and many of the girls at the school both during and after school hours. She had studied in India and had a strong belief in the Hindu Religion, she was also engaged to a Hindu who was a professor at Princeton University. He wore the traditional dress of a turban and came to visit her at our boarding school on a regularly basis. We attended many different Indian concerts including Ravi Shankar and became more fascinated with the mystery of the Indian Culture and religion.
By the time I had graduated high school in (1970) I was convinced I needed to be enlightened, go to India and find my Guru, "my living teacher to show me the way to God". After graduation I decided to attend college in Colorado, and attend both the University of Denver and Colorado University. I had always had the idea that one day I would go to India, the seed of this new belief system had been planted into me.
It is a common belief among New-Agers that follow Gurus that a Gurus needs to be alive in order to help you. So on the college campus I attended, I was highly influenced by the Rashneesh movement. This movement really took off and their Guru eventually moved from India to the West Coast in the U.S. to be with all of the young followers. The college campus had meditation classes and groups which were always promoting a Guru.
By my junior year of college I had transferred to the University of Washington in Seattle and decided to do a semester abroad and attended college in Avignon France. While I was in France I travelled to Greece and Turkey and thought I'd just take a train to India because I didn't feel the need to finish college. The concept of being enlightened had overpowered my need to finish my education. The Lord had different plans for my life, he used my grandmother to track me down. She convinced me to come home and finish school so I graduated College in 1974 from the University of Washington. During this time the media and top celebrities such as the Beatles, were off visiting their Gurus, so my influence within the Hindu and Eastern Religion continued. The seed of this new belief system I had received during high school actually developed enough to brainwash me into believing I needed to find a living Gurus to find enlightenment.
Another aspect of my New Age journey was falling prey to the feminist movement and the attitude that woman were nothing without a career. So I had again put India on the back shelf to enter the career path, to become a successful publisher. I became solely focused on my work, and had no time for spiritually matters. By the age of twenty eight I had accomplished my goal of being a publisher and was working in Hawaii with Visitor Publication Inc.. By thirty I'd had been in a major auto accident in the company car. The accident left me serious disabled and I could not work or even drive, and was left in constant pain. Searching for a way to relieve the pain I turned back to the Hindu Religion and without realizing it until later, I like to say; my insurance company paid for me to become future brainwashed in the New Age. My insurance company within the state of Hawaii sent me Dr. Norman Shelly's Pain and Rehabilitation Clinic in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which was one of the first model pain clinics in the country. The pain clinic has since moved to Menninger's Clinic in the Midwest. The main training in this clinic was autogenic, which is a combination of hypnosis and New Thought philosophy of beliefs. The New Thought belief comes from the Science of the Mind, created by Dr. Ernest Holmes, Theosophy Society and Mary Baker Eddy, who was the founder of the Christian Science Religion. During my stay at the pain clinic, the patients were placed under subliminal mode to alter the brain waves of thinking, while feeding the brain messages of a new value and belief system. A mind over matter way to become pain free, "If you believe you have no pain, then you have no pain." The staff at the clinic actually verbally put down any form of suffering, and virtue in suffering. No redemptive suffering or that the suffering you are experiencing could be from God, but only a result of your own guilt. The concept of salvation was self endured, "If you wanted to be saved, healed or pain free you better do it yourself." There was no room for Christian Values or concepts. This describes the New Age trinity of Me, Myself and I. These auto-suggestions went on daily, hourly for the duration of my stay. I stayed at the pain clinic for about a month. When I finally left the clinic they gave me books and tapes to take home so I could stay on the autogenic system in order to stay pain free, and to keep this "New Thought" in my mind to support my new way of thinking.
After my experiences within the clinic, I decided to join New Age Churches. The main goal at the time was to give light to the Church of Religious Science, and Unity Churches, these churches are now international in most cities within the United States. I ended up joining the ministry training program at the North County Church of Religious Science in Encinitas, CA and spent four years learning under a former Catholic minister where the brainwashing continued in depth until I truly had a new belief system.
I also was a prayer practitioner at the Seaside Church of Religious Science in Del Mar, CA. Having been in pain, I was drawn to the New Age healing arts and became certified as a Reiki healer and master trainer and was certified in Hands of Light training by Barbara Brennar, School of Healing. This led to desire to learn more about the psychic world — the healing arts aren't about using the Holy Spirit. So I went for psychic training classes at the Teaching of the Inner Christ in Lemon grove CA, to learn counterfeit gifts such as clairvoyant, clairsentient, and clairaudient and to be more connected with fallen spirits and spirit guides. During the prayer practitioner work at the churches, we assisted people to "manifest" their desires, using God more like a Genie who grants you wishes, than a loving creator who we should submit our will to. The essence of the New Age teachings is to manifest into human experience what they consider to be the divine will because they think that we are all "gods". A basic denial of original sin and the same lie that Satan gave to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Only now the idea is promoted with more sophisticated brainwashing programs.
Prayer practitioner work led to healing work and training in counselling for me. In 1989 I became a certified Ericksonian Hypotherapist. The emphasis was on part of life regression therapy and future life. One of the hardest beliefs to be rid of from the New Age is the belief in reincarnation. There is such bondage in that belief system. Dr. Milton Erickson designed this type of therapy using N.L.P or (Neurolinguistic programming.) I received my N.L.P. training at Robbins Research Int. In San Diego by Anthony (Tony) Robbins, Tony Robbins is a master hypnotist. I became further immersed in the world of hypnosis and it became for me a complete reprogramming of my mind and a serious loss of personal will power.
The beginning of my conversion started in 1990. I was in Hawaii at the Ericksonian therapy seminar and at one point I was in the lounge between classes reading an article about the New Age leader and teacher Sandra Ray's trip to Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sandra's aim in going was to visit "Mother Mary." She says she was even invited by the priest at St. James Church to be in the room with the visionaries darning the apparition. Her experience there gave her the insight to start the goddess movement which is very big within the New Age. She believed she witnessed the heaven goddess, "Mother Mary", coming down to meet the earth goddess, Gaia. While I was sitting there reading this article what really struck me was that I knew our Lady was definitely not a goddess. So I thank the Sacred Heart nuns of my early childhood that some truth had stuck with me. When I returned home to San Diego I happened to be in Long's Drug Store and found a Life Magazine with a picture of a statue of our Lady on the cover and the title "Do you believe in Miracles"? So I bought that as a follow-up to the New Age magazine that I had been reading while I was in Hawaii. Time magazine had a truer version of Mary and encouraged me to look deeper into her. The key person who the Lord brought into my life to help me fully commit my life to Christ and our Blessed Mother was Beverly Nelson, a Lay Missionary of Charity in the order of Mother Theresa. As a result of Beverly's encouragement I also joined the Lay Missionary's of Charity and became active within the order. I also joined R.C.I.A, at St. Francis Parish in Vista, CA. and became a sponsor for many of my New Age friends to become Catholic within the church. Including a former New Age doctor, my former New Age professor, a top New Age musician, personal friends who have been in New Age for over thirty year and my ex-husband, all of these people were adults between the ages of thirty five and fifty. They are glad for their new-found faith in Christ. My daughter, has also had all of her sacraments within the Catholic Faith, and is a practicing Young Adult.
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 http://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.
http://www.spiritbattleforsouls.org/id41.html
http://www.courageouspriest.com/warning-eastern-meditation-should-never-be-used
No comments:
Post a Comment