Oh boy. The problem with big time celebrity members in your ranks is big time celebrity bad PR. By now we have all learned that totally lovable and not at all insane national treasure Tom Cruise is divorcing from Katie Holmes, his bride of 5 years.
The media is completely captivated, because this kind of thing never happens with celebrities. Well, there’s that, and the fact that there are increasingly creepy reports of Katie being followed by mysterious men in luxury cars (a photo from TMZ shows a man in an Escalade with his face buried in a tabloid that says “KATIE DUMPS TOM.” Nice skills, Harriet).
TMZ is now reporting that, according to “sources connected with Katie,” she had grown fearful that daughter Suri would be confined and indoctrinated into the elite Sea Organization (or Sea Org), a military-like institution in which the highest levels of Scientology are taught. Church of Scientology Chairman of the Board and all-around Scary Important Person David Miscavige is a member of Sea Org, effectively cementing it as the Church’s most powerful center of management. Unsurprisingly, it is also a group in which intense labor and emotional abuse is widely attested to, and in which members must sign a billion year contract. It’s a little much in the way of family planning.
For a long time, Scientology seemed to exist, for most of us, in the faraway land of celebrity pedigree, an organization so uncanny and removed from everyday life that it tended to garner only a passive interest in mainstream society. But in the last few years, thanks in large part to the squirrely antics of Anonymous, the growing voices of ex-church members, and Tom Cruise’s own mouthole, the Church of Scientology has been under increasing scrutiny—and criticism—in our society on all fronts.
Although its fundamental logic and spiritual philosophies are widely mocked, I believe, more deservedly, we have been focusing our collective interest on repeated instances of its transparent elitism, its members’ penchants for being humorless and litigious, and, most importantly, its very real history of inhumane practices which sometimes result in death, as in the sad and infuriating case of Lisa McPherson. The blanket of privacy that Sea Org depends on is being slowly turned down.
Miscavige is being publicly called out for meddling in Tom Cruise’s personal life by Marty Rathbun, Cruise’s former personal auditor. Once the Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center and second highest-ranking official, Rathbun broke away from the Church in 2004 and now identifies as an Independent Scientologist. He runs a fascinating blog dedicated to documenting the various abuses and hardships of the Church while also working as an ally for members who seek to flee.
According to the Village Voice’s comprehensive Scientology blog, Miscavige was very angry with Rathbun for counseling Tom to ease off of Kidman, who kept Tom and their family almost completely out of the Church during their marriage, and to focus instead on his commitment to the Church. (According to Rathbun, Miscavige believed he could have gotten $80-$100 million more dollars out of Cruise’s divorce, but Kidman eventually lost the fight to keep their children out of the Church; both children Isabella and Connor are lifelong members of Sea Org). Although “a source” is now claiming that the split with Katie Holmes has nothing to do with Scientology, and Holmes even “had enthusiasm” for it, it is growing increasingly difficult to ignore the attestations of censorship and secrecy that members have made.
I am a professional speculator so I will speculate that Katie Holmes and daughter Suri are in little danger at this point, as the number one enemy of coercion by unsavory methods is public knowledge, and celebrities have plenty of that. But perhaps it is important to use these high-profile people as a way to examine and expose an institution that has a real history of mistreating its members. More so than the messages of Scientology, which cater to a fervent belief in Humanism tailor made to appeal to those at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy, we should examine, instead, groups like Sea Org and the systematic leadership of the Church itself, run by a man and his troika fueled by unbounded narcissism and obsessive fund raising.
How many more cases like Lisa McPherson or Shelly Miscavige—who has been missing since 2007—will there be before we take a hard look at the Church of Scientology and wonder about all the other children that don’t have defecting celebrity mommies with million dollar trust funds and limitless protection?
