OK, hands up if you’re rather salaciously enjoying the continuing fall out from Friday’s announcement that Katie Holmes had finally come to her senses and was divorcing actor/scientologist/mentalist, Tom Cruise. No? Well, I am so I’m going to write a wee piece on it, and damn the consequences!
The world gasped when in 2006, Katie Holmes threw away a burgeoning post-Dawson’s Creek film career to marry all-round nutter, Tom Cruise. Previous to this, Katie Holmes had been deemed most likely to succeed in the wake of the demise of Dawson’s Creek with roles in films such as Go, Wonder Boys and Pieces of April showing her to be much more than the angsty Joey. She also starred as Bruce Wayne’s love interest in Batman Begins but was dropped in favour of Maggie Gyllenhaal for the sequel. The rot of Katie’s career had set in and many saw her marriage to Cruise as the reason for it.
Cruise had long been a follower of Scientology, set up in 1952 by Ron L. Hubbard. Scientologists believe that all people are immortal aliens trapped on earth in physical form and before coming to earth, they had a number of lives where they existed among other extraterrestrial folks! That’s no joke! The purpose is that you unlock your true relationship to others and God and you must train yourself to do this. ‘Auditing’ is one way, which is similar to Catholic confession and another way, for women only is that they are made to give birth in silence. This was reported to be true for Holmes.
How did this woman continue in this marriage for as long as she did?!
Since the announcement of the split, ever more bizarre stories have continued to come to the surface. The first story was that the Church of Scientology was having her followed, no reason was really offered for this claim but is any reason really necessary? A day later, it was claimed that Tom had wanted to send six-year old Suri to a boot camp to be taught the ways of Scientology. Something that Holmes strongly opposed, for which you can hardly blame her! Most recently there has been the story that the marriage was hampered by Cruise’s close friendship with Scientology leader, David Miscavige. He was said to be Tom’s confidante and Katie increasingly came in second when it came to Cruise making life decisions.
Good on Katie for starting the path to freedom from this extreme religion, in which some of its practices are, shall we say, highly questionable…
