Katie Holmes Renounces Christianity?
This Katie Holmes interview appeared in August 2005:
On the day we meet, Holmes tells me she's not a Scientologist. (Three days later, in Europe, she will announce that she has converted.) "You know, it's really exciting," the actress says of the religion. "I just started auditing"—Scientology's word for receiving spiritual counseling—"and I'm taking some courses, and I really like it. I feel it's really helping. What I like about it is that, you know, I was raised Catholic, and you can be a Catholic and a Scientologist, Jewish and a Scientologist." Holmes went to Notre Dame Academy, a Catholic high school in Toledo, and was accepted at Columbia University before she landed the role of the lovelorn tomboy Joey Potter on Dawson's Creek. Her parents, devout Catholics, are said to be a weekly fixture at Christ the King church in Toledo. "I'm learning," Holmes says, as the makeup artist applies eye shadow, "to celebrate my own spirit, my own being."
That was then. This is now. From E! Online/Yahoo:
Despite Katie Holmes' Catholic upbringing, there will be no baptism for the first fruit of her labor.
"You can be Catholic and be a Scientologist. You can be Jewish and be a Scientologist," Tom Cruise--movie star and male half of the relationship otherwise known as TomKat--told Diane Sawyer in an interview scheduled to air Friday on ABC's Primetime. "But we're just Scientologists."
Interesting that both Holmes and Cruise cited Catholicism and Judaism. Here's a message board post that cites the same two faiths:
#60
Greg
URL
July 7, 2005
07:05 PM
My best friend is a Jewish Scientologist. My kid's babysitter is a Catholic Scientologist.
Of course, if you assume all the BS you read on web boards is the "ultimate truth" about Scientology, you'd say "OMG, how could that be!!"
Answer: Because most posts on web boards like these are NOT the ultimate truth.
Greg's URL is liveandgrow.org, a web site that opens with an L. Ron Hubbard quote. Do any Scientologists talk about religions other than Judaism and Catholicism? Well, John Travolta got slightly off script when talking with Oprah:
[fade in from commercial break]
OPRAH: ... really misunder... Every time you say the word people get...
I know back there my producers are going OOHH my God Scientology...
TRAVOLTA: You can be a Catholic Scientologist...
OPRAH: You can?
TRAVOLTA: ...and a Protestent Sc... and a Baptist S... We have every
denomination.
But let's look a little more at Katie's background. Yes, I trust the Star's sources about as much as I trust Enron's PR reps, but there may be nuggets of truth in this Star story - at least the part about Katie's parents:
And although Katie has gone on record expressing her interest in Scientology, it's apparently becoming a sticking point in the couple's wedding plans. The actress apparently wants a Roman Catholic priest at their wedding out of respect for her parents, Martin Sr., a lawyer, and Kathy, a homemaker — both of whom are devout Catholics. "She probably feels that would make her parents happy," reveals the source.
But Tom, who was raised Catholic and is now a devout Scientologist, probably doesn't feel a need to have the blessing of the Catholic Church when he says "I do," adds the insider. He also wants to hold the wedding in a Scientologist-friendly location, according to the source, such as the Scientology Celebrity Center in Los Angeles or aboard the Scientology yacht, "where they can have some privacy."
The only part of that excerpt that I trust is the part about Cruise and Holmes being former Catholics. So this is interesting:
New Church members are told that Scientology's policy is to "Change no man's religion." They are also assured that Scientology doctrine does not conflict with any other religions, and indeed is consistent and supportive of ALL religions, past and present....
The main target of Scientology's promotion and marketing are Christians, and by far the largest percentage of Scientology's members come from Christian backgrounds. Using Scientology's own figures from "What is Scientology?" Christians account for 53% of its members. The second largest percentage comes from Judaism....
Scientology enforces the acceptance of the implant teaching with its system of "ethics" punishments, its "auditing procedures," and its institutionalized mockery of God and Christ. Anyone in Scientology who professes a belief in Christ, or God, or who seeks help through prayer, is subtly viewed and handled as a "psychotic." Such a person is segregated, given special auditing to break the belief, and, if the "aberration" persists, they are "off-loaded." Members learn quickly inside Scientology to disavow any belief in God, or to not mention Him, or to not look to Him for wisdom or help, and to view Christians as "aberrated" and "dramatizing the Christ implant."
Members learn that, inside Scientology, even thinking of Christ or God as real is labeled as an "other practice," a punishable "ethics offense" or "overt," which would become the subject of a "security check" on Scientology's lie detector, its "E-meter."
Here are some Hubbard quotes on the topic:
"Also the Christian Church used [and uses] implanting [with a squirrel version of the 7s']. These gangsters were the Nicomidians from lower Egypt who were chased out for criminal practices [implanting officials]. They took over the Niocene Creed just before the year zero, invented Christ [who comes from the crucifixion in R6 75 million years ago] and implanted their way to 'power'. The original Nicomidians date about 600 BC and people who were Christ date at 75 million years ago." (L. Ron Hubbard, "Resistive Cases, Former Therapy," HCOB 23 September 1968)
"You'll find, by the way, another manifestation is preclears will shift identities and borrow facsimiles like mad. There's what they call the Christ game and that game has been played and played and played and played -- honest to Pete, these cards are just so thin. They've been laid down amongst the coffee cups and so forth of a whole universe. You'll find out thousands of years before the year one A.D. Earth, you will have facsimiles and dolls made up like Christ. Fac One a million years ago is occasionally rigged with Christ and a Devil and an angel. It's a fascinating thing, it's an old game. Here on Earth there was undoubtedly a Christ. One of the reasons he was...he swept in so suddenly uh...and...and he would go forward so hard is he had a good assist back of him in terms of an implant."
"Religion does much to keep the assumption in restimulation, being basically a control mechanism used by those who have sent the preclear into a body. You will find the cross as a symbol all over the universe, and the Christ legend as implant in preclears a million years ago." (PAB 31, volume 2, page 26, 1954)
"A few operating thetans scarcely could lead to trouble. Witness the chaos resulting from the activities and other determinism technology of one operating thetan, 2,000 years ago. It is despicable and utterly beneath contempt to tell a man he must repent, that he is evil. Those who talk most about peace on earth and good-will among men themselves carry forward the seas of unrest, war and chaos."
Comments
The Scientologists’ ulterior motives were well and truly exposed when they were found distributing a 30 page full color, propaganda booklet in Sinhala, titled, Santhoshayata Maga (The Path to Joy) in Colombo suburbs, recently. Questions have also been raised on their movements outside tsunami- affected areas, despite their pretence of having come to aid tsunami victims.
This came to light when the Venerable Gnanaweera of the Mallikarama Buddhist Temple, Ratmalana and Deeptha L. Gamage a U.S.-based Sri Lankan Journalist confronted them in two separate incidents.
A copy of the half A-4 sized booklet that came into Gamage’s hands carries maliciously distorted facts on Buddhism’s history.
In a chapter that warns readers against wrong sexual behavior, the author states on page 8: “ Adultery is nothing new. Buddhism, which was a powerful religion in India in the Seventh Century, disappeared from there as a result of sex perversions of Buddhist monks in temples.”
Any one with a fair knowledge of Indian history knows that the primary cause of Buddhism’s disappearance from that country was the series of Islamic invasions....
The Ven.Gnanaweera regretted that this utter lack of concern on the part of state officials was one major factor that encouraged evangelists and proselytizers to engage in unethical religious conversions.
Deeptha Gamage who is currently in Sri Lanka on private business, found a group of yellow-uniformed Scientologists collecting garbage in a section of Mount Lavinia.
When he asked them what they were doing there instead of being in the tsunami hit areas, they had responded by saying that they were helping to keep the town clean.
It is here that Gamage noted that they had distributed copies of the offensive booklet. The group had even rented a house nearby without informing the real purpose of their being in the area.
According to Gamage, this Scientology group had even met the Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia Municipal authorities to discuss what material assistance they could offer to the council. This was, he said, a confidence building measure that could be useful to their other activities.
Gamage said that he was well aware of Scientologists’ underhand activities since their headquarters was located on the Santa Monica Boulevard-Los Angeles Road, close to where he has his home in LA. He added that Dr. Walter Jayasinghe a Sri Lankan-born physician in LA had been converted from Buddhism to Scientology. He was now trying to persuade other Americans of Sri Lankan-origin to embrace his new faith.
Gamini Perera Coordinator, Joint Committee of Buddhist Organizations in Sri Lanka said that there were reports Scientologists were even going to universities and that a certain Government Minister had permitted them to work here unhindered.
The unethical conversions debate in Sri Lanka is simmering up with German Journalist Christian Eckert replying to the Church of Scientology’s response from Lind Simmons Hights, the Media Affairs Director of the Scientologists. Earlier, Eckert had gathered sufficient evidence of conversion attempts by Scientologists and Christian Evangelists in Sri Lanka.
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