An entire generation is being lost to the occult and other New Age practices, says Catholic author and speaker Moira Noonan.

Noonan, of San Diego, was in St. Louis last week for several talks in which she shared the details of her leaving the Catholic Church as a teenager, embracing New Age practices for a quarter of a century and her eventual decision to return to the Church.

She penned those experiences in a book called “Ransomed From Darkness: The New Age, Christian Faith and the Battle for Souls,” published in 2005 by North Bay Books.Noonan spoke Jan. 24 at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in South St. Louis before a group of teens with Southside Youth Ministry, a regional youth ministry effort in the area. She also spoke later that week before young people at an XLT-South gathering and at the St. Joseph Radio Catholic Lecture Series at the Shrine of St. Ferdinand in Florissant.

“I want to teach them about the truth of the Church, so when the media bombards them with all the supernatural, the reincarnation and other spirits, that they’ll have the discernment and the strength to always want the Holy Spirit,” she said in an interview with the Review. “The Holy Spirit will always lead them to the truth.”

Noonan, who once worked for a Hollywood movie producer, warned youths against reading books such as the Harry Potter series, which includes references of witchcraft and other false forms of spirituality, and viewing television programs with references to New Age practices, such as “Medium” and “Smallville.”

She said her experience in Hollywood gave her the chance to see that some programs dealing with the occult are created with the assistance of true professionals involved in witchcraft or other methods of New Age spirituality.

“They’re not making this stuff up,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”

She noted that young people today are bombarded even more so in the media by these types of TV programs, books and movies than she was when she was a teenager.

Noonan was 15 and just had received the Sacrament of Confirmation when she decided to leave the Catholic Church. She said she came from a “cultural Catholic family,” in which she said she didn’t receive proper faith formation.

She eventually became involved as a minister in the Church of Religious Science and participated in occult activities such as psychic counseling and therapy, hypnotherapy, astrology, reiki, channeling, crystals, goddess spirituality and clairvoyance.

In 1993, Noonan and a group of her friends were on their way to a UFO sighting in Sedona, Ariz., when she heard a rumor that the Blessed Mother was appearing to people in a nearby Catholic church.

“People in New Age see her as a goddess,” explained Noonan. However, she noted that she felt she still had “a little shred of Catholicism in me. That little shred told me that the Blessed Mother — this was not a goddess. She was a real person.”

When she got to the church, she encountered a healing Mass in progress, something Noonan said she didn’t know existed because of her long absence from the Church.

As she looked at the priest, she asked God, “If this priest is from you, tell me right now, or I’m leaving and never coming back.” She then said she saw a vision of Christ at his Passion. She added she heard God tell her: “He is my disciple. Sit down, you are home.”

Noonan later met with the priest and went to confession.

Citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Noonan told the teens that all Christian souls are in a battle of good vs. evil. She said, “I didn’t realize my soul was in a battle — it’s up for grabs. My soul was really going into darkness. (God) was grabbing my soul back.”

She said the catechism also teaches that all forms of divination, magic and sorcery, among other occult practices, are to be rejected. “They contradict the honor, respect and loving fear that we owe to God alone.” (no. 2116).

She encouraged the teens to embrace the sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Reconciliation. She also asked those who have become open to media messages promoting the occult to seek confession immediately.

Noonan said there are many positive messages in books, movies and television, which can be embraced.

She cited examples such as the “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and movie series.

Some Disney movies, such as “Cinderella” and “Snow White,” “make it very clear at the struggle between good and evil, sin and virtue,” she said. “They don’t mix it.”

She also noted that Fox has started a division called Fox Faith, aimed at producing family friendly and Christian-centered movies. “Love’s Abiding Joy” is its first release.

But as for messages that include references of the occult, supernatural powers and other forms of New Age spirituality, “none of these messages say we have God the Father, who sent us the gift of the Holy Spirit,” said Noonan.

Catholics, she said, must “pray for prophecy, pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit. We need to say, ‘Lord, I love you, I want to follow you.’

“I want to help you understand the difference,” said Noonan.

Source: St.Louis Review

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