Why is Tom Cruise still such a praised celebrity? Do you think people will ever take his membership in the church seriously?

Tom Cruise is not really the issue. As long as the Church of Scientology itself is given the right to continue to do what it is doing, rather than being closed down as a criminal organization (as it should be), then everybody, including Tom Cruise, still has the right to be a member of that organization. It would still be possible (and reasonable) for people to regard Tom Cruise as a foolish person for believing in Scientology, but nearly everyone in the world has at least some foolish or incorrect belief. There is not a single religion on Earth that I could not criticize, in most cases quite seriously. It is also foolish (for example) to believe in astrology. However, astrologers cause relatively little social harm, unlike the Church of Scientology. Some kinds of foolishness are less harmful than others.

It is also true that all actors have personal lives which are normally separate, at least to a degree, from their professional lives. Lots of actors have failed marriages (Tom Cruise has had three so far, but then, he is very far from having the number of failed marriages that Elizabeth Taylor managed to have, and she was not a Scientologist). Many actors have histories of alcoholism and/or drug abuse. Robert Downey Jr. was at one time a serious drug addict who got into a lot of trouble, but no one now holds that against him since he seems to have made a good recovery and he has done excellent work in his recent roles as Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes and so forth. Even though Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a drug overdose, he is still quite rightly regarded as having been a great actor. Actors are imperfect human beings, which is generally known and accepted. We are all imperfect human beings.

Some people are harder to forgive than others. Mel Gibson, for example, is also a great actor (he gave a brilliant performance in the movie "The Beaver" for example) but I do not forgive him for being an anti-Semite. I do not personally forgive Tom Cruise for being a Scientologist, but nonetheless, he is still a great actor, and I still enjoy his movies.

/r/scientology Thread