August 29, 2006--Praying for Tom Cruise
Help me out here. Why do so many (me included) take so much pleasure in Tom Cruise’s aberrant antics and his fall from Hollywood grace?
Schadenfreud, you say—the guilty please so many of us appear to take from the bad news, afflictions, and downfall of the mighty. Especially of those who we contributed to making mighty by purchasing their CDs (Britney Spears); ogling at (Paris Hilton); voting for (remember Monica Lewinsky?); cooking along with (Martha); and, as in Tom’s case, made rich and famous by buying more than three billion dollars worth of tickets to see his movies.
It’s a very interesting phenomenon in this era of hyper-celebrity.
But while we indulge ourselves in this way, while Tom Cruise begins to pick himself up off Oprah’s couch (see, I can’t control myself) by beginning to raise money on his own to finance his next film, others, even in Hollywood, are taking a different, much more benevolent tack.
Rather than lapping up the gossip that drips off the Page Sixes of America, they spend long, unremunerated days praying for us Sodomites. Actually, LA sinners. They are the cloistered nuns of Hollywood (this is not a pitch for a movie deal) who for decades have been offering up prayers for those who need it most—for those living and working in what they call “the Babylon of the U.S.A.” (see NY Times article below).
These are old-fashioned Catholic nuns, not members of a southern California Hale Bopp cult, of the type we used to see walking about with lowered heads, wearing full habits.
Though you might have thought they are no more, a remnant still exists. But they are literally a dying breed. Forty years ago there were 180,000 of them. Today there are just 70,000, only 5,000 of whom are cloistered, and there are fewer than 6,000 younger than 50.
But out in Hollywood there are the ancient Sisters Mary Pia and Mary St. Pious still hard at work. Along with 21 other Dominican nuns, they live in a monastery just blocks from Hollywood and Vine. And, although they have never heard of Hugh Hefner nor listened to an Elvis tune nor know anything about the pedophilia problems within the Church, (they do know about Martha!), they pray for all of them as well as the dopers and runaways and sexually ambiguous who wander the streets of their territory.
As Mary Pia says, “One doesn’t need to be of it to know of it.”
On the other hand, I wonder what they think of Scientology.
Schadenfreud, you say—the guilty please so many of us appear to take from the bad news, afflictions, and downfall of the mighty. Especially of those who we contributed to making mighty by purchasing their CDs (Britney Spears); ogling at (Paris Hilton); voting for (remember Monica Lewinsky?); cooking along with (Martha); and, as in Tom’s case, made rich and famous by buying more than three billion dollars worth of tickets to see his movies.
It’s a very interesting phenomenon in this era of hyper-celebrity.
But while we indulge ourselves in this way, while Tom Cruise begins to pick himself up off Oprah’s couch (see, I can’t control myself) by beginning to raise money on his own to finance his next film, others, even in Hollywood, are taking a different, much more benevolent tack.
Rather than lapping up the gossip that drips off the Page Sixes of America, they spend long, unremunerated days praying for us Sodomites. Actually, LA sinners. They are the cloistered nuns of Hollywood (this is not a pitch for a movie deal) who for decades have been offering up prayers for those who need it most—for those living and working in what they call “the Babylon of the U.S.A.” (see NY Times article below).
These are old-fashioned Catholic nuns, not members of a southern California Hale Bopp cult, of the type we used to see walking about with lowered heads, wearing full habits.
Though you might have thought they are no more, a remnant still exists. But they are literally a dying breed. Forty years ago there were 180,000 of them. Today there are just 70,000, only 5,000 of whom are cloistered, and there are fewer than 6,000 younger than 50.
But out in Hollywood there are the ancient Sisters Mary Pia and Mary St. Pious still hard at work. Along with 21 other Dominican nuns, they live in a monastery just blocks from Hollywood and Vine. And, although they have never heard of Hugh Hefner nor listened to an Elvis tune nor know anything about the pedophilia problems within the Church, (they do know about Martha!), they pray for all of them as well as the dopers and runaways and sexually ambiguous who wander the streets of their territory.
As Mary Pia says, “One doesn’t need to be of it to know of it.”
On the other hand, I wonder what they think of Scientology.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:00 AM
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