Tom Cruise Pulled Off the Best Scientology Stunt Ever. If Only He Could Actually Float | Catherine Bennett

ASome 75 million years after a powerful intergalactic leader somehow initiated the existence of today’s Scientologists, the interests of their religion and the rest of humanity finally appear to be aligned: in a shared devotion to Tom Cruise.

After Cruise leapt into the Olympic closing ceremony to retrieve a flag that he had carried by motorcycle, plane and parachute to the Hollywood sign in L.A. after being lauded by dazzled elite athletes, both his performance and his casting were hailed as inspired. You would never have known, given the relentless praise that recognized him as the world’s most beloved, bravest, most revered star, that Cruise had long been considered too senior a Scientologist to be unconditionally admired or, given that organization’s reported vices, much tolerated.

The new tributes have tended to overlook Cruise’s significance, since, in the words of one of the Church of Scientology’s most persistent investigators, John Sweeney, he is its “apostle, the living embodiment of Scientology.” Current leader David Miscavige was Cruise’s best man twice.

For Scientology, Descent into the Stadium must be, if not its greatest public triumph, a crowning corrective to endless bad publicity; a milestone surely on par with historic victories over tax authorities who claimed it wasn’t really a religion. In fact, L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology had originated as his science of “Dianetics,” a set of principles that, he said, had nothing to do with “any nonsense of mysticism or spiritualism or religion.” All old differences were forgotten when Cruise, looking slightly leathery but no doubt agile in his trademark action suit, was chosen, presumably over a number of non-Scientologist candidates, to star in the biggest show ever staged by the world’s most stubbornly secular and, thus far, style-conscious country, whose president can recite Molière by heart.

If it seems unlikely that the French have permanently transformed into the friendly folk whose smiling faces have shocked visitors to Paris, the eventual presentation of Cruise rather than, say, Omar Sy, or some other major French artist or performer, is a decidedly ostentatious departure from the country’s traditional aversion to Hollywoodization. Although there’s no doubting its success. International recognition of this cultural surrender to Cruise’s aesthetic must have been enough to make those Scientology survivors brave enough to detail horrific experiences wonder why they bothered.

Scientology is a proselytizing organization that reportedly offers its acolytes, among possible benefits, the reward of advanced, sometimes superhuman powers. At least some of the publications that now applaud Cruise’s stunts must be aware of the commensurate value of a flying Scientologist. Even one on a rope. Rumor has it that Cruise is spiritually advanced enough to levitate. In retrospect, Darcey Bussell may never have received quite the adulation she deserved in 2012, when she rode a flaming phoenix into London’s closing ceremony.

A typical example of an Olympic Games-triggered cruise epiphany was the Sun‘s overnight conversion from recent Scientology- and Cruise-related suspicions (is his alleged estrangement from his daughter, it recently asked, linked to the organization’s reported brutality toward non-believing family members?) to “Mission LA28” worship. In May, it published an escaped Scientology patient’s account of childhood conditioning: “It prepares you for abuse, it prepares you to accept it, to say nothing, to think that you’re just supposed to be there and endure it.” Last week, it asked readers: “Is Tom Cruise the greatest action movie star ever?”

Weeks after French organizers groaned at having inadvertently upset people who thought they had spotted the mockery of the Last Supper, the closing event confirmed that, given the choice of spiritual sides to irritate, the best option is invariably secular. The religiously offended were told, after the supper misunderstanding, “If people were offended, we are truly sorry.” The secularly offended were advised by the French sports minister, in anticipation of a wholly deliberate experiment in the promotion of Scientology, to swallow it: “Stop always looking for controversy.”

As if, in a strictly secular country with a longstanding distaste for Scientology in particular, it were possible that a French Cruise-glorifying show could have escaped condemnation. Weeks ago, a government agency, Miviludes, warned that Scientology-linked “No to Drugs” pamphlets were being distributed. When Cruise’s participation came to light, the head of a victims’ organization, Caffes, called it a “disgrace.” Catherine Katz, a former judge who now heads Unadfi, a group that defends victims against cults, said: “The mere fact that we are talking about his presence is an insult to victims.” An Unadfi comic strip warning children about Scientology specifically refers to Cruise’s alleged alienation from his youngest child.

Even without this local opposition, you would think that the well-distributed material from 20 years of exposés, trials and investigations would amount to a case for not promoting the world’s second most powerful Scientologist unless absolutely necessary. Unless the organizers were given unprecedented assurances of reform, they had no reason, with Hubbard’s successor, Miscavige, still at the helm, to think that Scientologists operated differently now than they did in 2013, when Sweeney, a war correspondent, wrote, “I am afraid now, afraid of them and afraid of it.”

But it is true: the response to the Scientology flag has been overwhelming. Whether or not this could have been achieved without a combination of Olympic hysteria and recent developments in the normalization of inanity, the organizers were absolutely right to consider the services of this eternal spiritual being more than worthy of the complaints of cultish secularists. Scientologists will attest, perhaps correctly, that compared with Q-Anon mythology, the older organization’s extraterrestrial origin story, with its mass murders and disembodied souls, is one of distinctive complexity. If it weren’t for the documented misery, alleged scandals, and intimidation of critics, Hubbard’s church could practically pass for respectable.

As it stands, Tom Cruise’s miraculous deculturation must be one of the most regrettable victories of the French Olympics.

Catherine Bennett is a columnist for The Observer