Excerpted from The New York Times
By NADINE BROZAN
Published: November 12, 2006
If Tom Cruise, a devotee of the Church of Scientology, weds Katie Holmes in Italy on Saturday, as his spokesman has announced, the event may well be a Scientology ceremony.
If so, the bridegroom might hear the Scientology minister proffer this advice, part of what the church refers to as the traditional ceremony: “Now, Tom, girls need clothes and food and tender happiness and frills, a pan, a comb, perhaps a cat. All caprice if you will, but still they need them.”
And Ms. Holmes could be told: “Hear well, sweet Katie, for promise binds. Young men are free and may forget. Remind him then that you may have necessities and follies, too.”
Unlike other components of Scientology, which are often cloaked in mystery and controversy, the words spoken at weddings tend to be easy to grasp. In some ways ceremonies performed by Scientology ministers resemble those of mainstream religions.
Brides dressed in white are escorted down the aisle by their fathers, said the Rev. John Carmichael, the president of the Church of Scientology of New York and the spokesman for 12 churches in New York and New Jersey. They may be attended by bridesmaids and flower girls. Music is a matter of individual choice, there is invariably a celebration of some kind, and many of the promises are familiar: to love, honor and be faithful through life’s vicissitudes.
“Our view of marriage and the family is a traditional view, so the wedding ceremony is traditional,” Mr. Carmichael said.
But there are also fundamental distinctions that set the rites apart.
For example, in the traditional Scientology ceremony, when the bridegroom promises to “keep her, well or ill,” he is also asked, “And when she’s older, do you then keep her still?”
The wording places more emphasis than the rites of many other religions on the likelihood that the future may be fraught with difficulty.
The Scientology minister tells the bride, “Know that life is stark and often somewhat grim, and tiredness and fret and pain and sickness do beget a state of mind where spring romance is far away and dead.”
Similarly the bridegroom is told, “The tides of fortune and of life are sometimes fair or grim.” He should not leave his wife in search of solutions, and the minister says, “Take thy own even though they sleep beneath foul straw and eat thin bread and walk on pavement less than kind.”
Why are such gloomy prospects mixed with the joy of weddings? “We do this strictly in the context of being able to do something about it,” Mr. Carmichael said. “Scientology has workable solutions to life’s problems. It is designed with tools people can use to help themselves and others.”
In the beliefs of Scientology, a fundamental tenet of marriage is contained in the symbol of the ARC triangle. Its three points stand for affinity, reality and communication, and couples are told they must be vigilant about preserving all three.
The Rev. Gaetane Asselin, the international community affairs director of the Church of Scientology International, said, “We ask them to make a promise to heal any upset before going to sleep.” She added, “As long as you maintain the triangle in full, you will understand each other.”
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