What was it Chesterton said? "If you cease to believe in God, you will believe in anything..."
To be fair, Cruise's people do deny the report.
That's the famous paraphrase of some lines from either "Heretics" or "Orthodoxy." Not an actual quote.
Mmmm - I think I'll wait until we get actual photographs of building work on this bunker before I believe the story.
I do hope I'm not shocking anyone when I reveal that tabloid newspapers have sometimes just a teensy bit exaggerated their 'celebrity exclusives' in order to shift a few thousand extra units of tomorrow's fish wrappers 
Calls to mind something a college tutor of mine once said, commenting on this phenomenon: "Fallen Catholics all go and study dolphins."
If he doesn't already have a space craft ready for launch hidden under that tennis court, that's it: I'm no longer a Tom Cruise fan, Risky Business or no Risky Business.
As it happens, I just quoted a passage from Chesterton this morning on "Rodak Riffs..." who sent me here:
"Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the center of the island; and their song had ceased."
There's another quote from him about how creeds/dogmas don't separate people but bring them togther. I looked and looked for that one this morning in ORTHODOXY. I think he must have said it somewhere else. Anybody know where?
most ex-Catholics are terrified of the intellectual freedom of the Faith
Most atheisms (or at least anti-ecclesialisms), like more general pathological skepticism, just end up being a lot easier than actual thought. You did mean "freedom from the intellect," right?
I am no fan of Tom Cruise and his adopted "religion," but I am going to need something more than a report in a supermarket tabloid (which is basically what The Star is) before I believe this story.
That said, there's no doubt that he left Catholicism for Scientology, so clearly he IS a prisoner of small ideas.
"Xenu"? Maybe that's what Tom Cruise sees when he looks at the 2012 Olympics logo. (The "Zion" hidden brainwashing message) He just wants us to begin to unconciously accept the coming takeover by the intergalactic Jewish conspiracy....
BTW: Hey Bob, there's room for you in the bunker.
intergalactic Jewish conspiracy....
Are these the same ones from Sealab 2021's Brotherhood of Neptune?
Google L Ron Hubbard and Alestar Crowley.
Tom Cruise used to be Catholic? Oh, my. His first big film featured him dancing around in unda-panz. If he was a cradle Catholic, the hand that rocked that cradle must have been shuddering...
So sweet. I love how all of us, even if we doubt the veracity of the Star and think it's only a rumor, find this story entirely plausible. Scientology is the best thing to happen to the Catholic Church since Mormonism. It helps remind people how sane we are, even if our leader does wear a dress.
I left what I didn't know to learn even more of what someone else didn't know, so I could help others learn more of the less that I had come to know.
I told a friend of my return to the Catholic Church, this is what she said: "Well, that's okay. You know the truth now, so you'll be fine there. I could probably go back to the Methodist church, too, now that I know the truth."
So let me get this straight, now that I "knew the "truth," it was ok to go back to the "church" I'd left for 26 years? The church I'd thought was out of touch and stodgy was now ok to return to because I'd learned the entire "truth elsewhere?" That is one huge, perplexing paradigm. I suppose she didn't know what to say, and had to be cordial, though she was no doubt confused, maybe shocked about my decision.
The "small ideas" the "group think" I'd been exposed to for nearly 3 decades had run amok for me. I had read 3 books in one weekend written by Catholics and it was like a tidal wave of grace washed over me and washed me up on the beach of Truth. Now I try my best to tell others of the wonder of it all, and it's now strangely silent. It's like they don't want to, or can't reply to some of what I write, because it would force them to think, and maybe have to reconcile to the Truth they've been content to live without in their cozy, comfy, customized "man-made" religion, which they think is now back to the way the "early church" believed. Yet they don't know ONE early Church father. It's bizarre and so perilous the "independent thinking" that isn't really thinking at all, but blind following. I'm only so grateful that my eyes were opened and by grace, I "saw" what I'd been blind to for so many years.
They're good people, but now that I'm Catholic, they keep me at a very comfortable distance. I only wish they could see the wonder of the Catholic faith, the vast and deep expanse of richness, the gifts, the grace, the beauty of all 7 Sacraments. I pray for them and hope we'll one day enjoy each other's presence beholding our Lord, with our Blessed Mother, all the Saints in heaven.
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