Now Pitching for Scientology: Katie Holmes

Fox News/February 3, 2006
By Roger Friedman

Well, it's happened. Katie Holmes is now shilling for Scientology.

I told you one year ago this week that I had received an unsolicited gift package in the mail from the Church of Scientology.

It included a personalized, signed note from Tom Cruise, informing me that a donation had been made in my name to the organization.

The package also included a framed set of Scientology lessons to live by. The most memorable was No. 12: Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.

Now I've seen the updated package for 2006, and it's a showstopper. The signed note now comes from Tom and Katie, and it includes both of their signatures.

Like the old letter, this one informs lucky recipients that donations have been made in their names to Scientology and welcomes them to check out all the included materials.

The package also contains a book that has pictures of smiling children and quotations, in large type, from people who would probably be surprised to find themselves in the company of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard: Kofi Annan and the late Martin Luther King Jr. The quotations are made to seem as if their authors endorse Scientology.

The new Scientology package comes as a brightly-colored cardboard box with many inserts, including a CD and a DVD. The DVD contains a weird music video called "United."

At the end of the video, many disparate people - including Jenna Elfman, Erika Christensen, Isaac Hayes and Catherine Bell of the TV show "JAG" - are all sort of nodding in a trance and clapping along while watching a TV news anchorman and repeating the song's chorus over and over.

It made me drowsy from monotony, but perhaps it has a different effect on others.

I can only imagine what Holmes' parents, devout Catholics and upstanding members of Toledo, Ohio, society, think of all this. But I'm told that Cruise recently bought them a million-dollar home close to his in Beverly Hills so they can be near their daughter when she gives birth to their first grandchild.

The date of this blessed event is said to be sometime around May 5, the day "Mission: Impossible 3" opens worldwide.