Twin Priests Perform “Double Duty” in Texas Medical Center

Good guys wear white ... well, not always. In the Texas Medical Center, they sometimes wear black.

Take, for example, Bruce and David Noble, who illustrate this point twice over. The brothers, identical twins, are both Catholic priests – Bruce at The Methodist Hospital and David at Memorial Hermann. Whenever the two join for a quick lunch or an outdoor stroll, heads turn, then smiles form, at the sight of the identical twins dressed alike in white clerical collars and black coats.

“We’re cut from the same cloth and the same pattern ... we get lots of double-takes,” says David.

Born in Queensland, Australia to a father who managed coal mines and a mother who loved to cook and host dinner parties, the brothers enjoyed a happy childhood filled with the usual “twin” pranks – switching classroom seats, toying with confused teachers, and sometimes confounding their own parents.

“Mother could instinctively tell us apart, but Father never could,” says Bruce. “He’d call us ‘Bruce ... David ... or whoever you are.’”

From the time they were born, the boys were instilled with a solid religious foundation, and attended Anglican church services every Sunday (Episcopalian in this country).

Neither Bruce nor David aspired to a religious vocation, nor had any preceding family members entered the ministry.

At the University of Queensland, Bruce studied to become a journalist and David, an architect. Little did they realize that each had begun to experience a subtle “pull” toward the church, a precursor to the parallel journey their lives would soon follow on the road to priesthood.

“One night around the kitchen table I announced to my parents that I had decided to become a priest. David looked at me incredulously, then revealed that he, too, had made the same choice,” recalls Bruce.

Neither brother had discussed their decision with the other, until that night.

“Perhaps this is an example of that special sense of mutual understanding that identical twins share. It’s something that transcends human explanation,” mused David.

After graduating from college, the two enrolled in the same seminary program in Brisbane, Australia.

Then, for the first time ever, the brothers were separated as they graduated and started their respective ministries as Anglican priests. David was sent off to mind the needs of Aussies in the remote Outback where there are “more kangaroos than people,” and was given responsibility for a parish larger than Texas, while Bruce worked overseas among the intellectual elite at England’s Oxford University while pursuing further postgraduate studies in theology. While at Oxford, he served as chairman of a committee designed to help the ultra-conservative university adapt to more modern times.

“This was during the radical changes of the ’60s, so Oxford’s system was in drastic need of overhaul,” he recalls.

Then, in another strange twist of fate (or perhaps divine intervention) both landed in New York. David arrived first to complete postgraduate theological studies at Columbia University’s religion department and seminary. Soon afterward, he was named associate director of Trinity Church on Wall Street, and became immersed in a new movement just catching on in New York called Marriage Encounter for Episcopalians, a program of marital renewal founded by Catholics and adapted for Episcopalians. The program “took off like a prairie fire” and swept the United States.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, Bruce was pastoring an ancient, historic church founded by Lady Godiva in Merrie, England. But like his brother, he soon received an invitation from the Anglican Church to spearhead the Marriage Encounter program, which by this time was wildly popular and in need of additional priests. He packed, headed to New York, and once again, the brothers’ lives were on a parallel course after a lengthy separation. They traveled the world for the next decade, presenting the Marriage Encounter program on five different continents, 40 weekends a year.

“Every Tuesday we flew in, every Thursday we flew out,” recalls David.

The frantic pace convinced the brothers to move from New York to centrally located Houston in 1975, so they could “start in the middle of the United States and work outward.” Houston was simply a place to “hang their hats and rest their feet” between trips. The brothers soon were being heralded as international leaders of the marriage renewal program, but were occasionally questioned by skeptics doubtful that never-married priests could be experts in marriage enrichment.

“Our response was, ‘Those who sit on the sidelines see the playing field better that those playing the game,’” David says.

The advantage to being a marriage counselor and a twin, Bruce adds, is that from birth, twins already are involved in a major “partner” relationship.

“Instinctively, we understand about sharing, compromising, and relating closely to another person.”

A common theme interwoven amongst many of the marriages they counseled was that couples were living “alongside” each other, but not actually “with” each other.

“Most had not begun to realize even a fraction of the wonder and beauty of the person they were living with. In marriage, if you put your mutual relationship first, everything else falls into place,” David says.

While the brothers were busy transforming the lives of countless couples through Marriage Encounter, little did they realize that their own lives were being transformed. After nearly a quarter-century as Episcopalian priests, each found themselves more and more drawn to Catholicism.

“The Catholic religion embodies a rich tradition and beautifully expresses the fullness of Christian faith. We’ve been all over the world, and have found that Catholicism, in our opinion, speaks to the widest range of people and cultures,” says David.

As they had so many times before, the brothers took the same turn, this time at the Protestant-Catholic crossroads. They resigned their orders as Episcopal clergy, and underwent an accelerated course of study to become Catholic priests. In 1987, they were ordained to the Catholic priesthood at St. Mary’s Seminary for the Diocese of Galveston-Houston. Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza presented them with a lifelong assignment to the Texas Medical Center, where the brothers became members of the Catholic Chaplain Corps, a group of priests, nuns and lay ministers who, with funding provided by the Catholic Diocese, provide spiritual support to hospitalized patients and their families.

Their job, Bruce says, is to act like human “shock absorbers,” helping patients to navigate the rough ride of illness.

“Doctors and nurses help manage the disease; clergy help manage the suffering. Helping patients to find meaning in what is happening makes it easier to handle and possible to transcend,” David elaborates. “Often through suffering we realize what we never before understood.”

When Bruce and David’s pagers signal a medical emergency and they run down the hospital corridors with black coattails flying, people “melt” into the walls to let them pass, an unspoken gesture of the significance of their priestly roles.

“Medicine achieves great things,” Bruce says, “but it’s the mystery of human life with which people must grapple. Our presence in the hospital is a reminder of this unspoken edict.”

Evolution, the Big Bang, the human genome – all offer a glimpse into something much bigger, David concurs.

“Remember, our DNA, cellular structure and the primordial matter used in the Earth’s formation had to originate from someone, somewhere,” he says. “We can trace scientific findings back to a point, but we must think beyond that point to realize there’s more, much more, to our existence.”

---

©2006 Texas Medical Center

---

E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu
URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/12_01_02/page_01.html