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Tuesday was a bad day for Scientology. One of their Hollywood faithful renounced his affiliation and they were found guilty of fraud in France.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) – Paul Haggis is a well-known Hollywood director (“Million Dollar Baby,” “Crash,” etc.) and self described civil liberties activist. His letter of renunciation, which was dated August 13 but made known Tuesday, revealed that he was leaving the Church of Scientology, after 35 years, due to their support of Proposition 8 banning efforts to give legal equivalency to homosexual ‘marriage’.

In the letter to Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, Haggis describes his anger with the public position taken by the Church of Scientology of San Diego, “Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California – rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state – shames us.

"I reached a point several weeks ago where I no longer knew what to think,” he also said. “You had allowed our name to be allied with the worst elements of the Christian Right. The church's (scientology’s) refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word. Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.”

Also on Tuesday, the French branch of the Church of Scientology was convicted in a Paris court of fraud and fined close to $900,000. There are approximately 45,000 adherents of the controversial group in the country.

This was the first time that the organization (“church”) in France had been tried and convicted and not just individual members. The fines were rendered against the Scientology Celebrity Center in Paris and a Scientology bookstore.

Six group leaders were also convicted of fraud. Four of them were given suspended sentences of 10 months to two years. The group’s leader in France, Alain Rosenberg, was given a two-year suspended sentence and fined $44,700. The remaining two were fined $1,490 and $2,980.

The case stemmed from a complaint filed by two women who claimed that they were pressured into buying products and enrolling in classes during the 1990’s. One of the women stated she was harassed into spending over $30,000.

The court did not ban the group (which calls itself a church) entirely, as the prosecution had demanded, stating that a change in the law prevented such an action for fraud. France has never viewed Scientology as a religion but rather as a sect, and according to the BBC, views the group as a "purely commercial operation designed to make as much money as it can at the expense of often vulnerable victims."

The Scientology organization has announced that it will appeal the conviction.

The New York Times quoted Olivier Morice, a lawyer for the successful plaintiffs in the case, as saying, “This is an historic decision. It’s the first time in France that the entity of the Church of Scientology is condemned for fraud as an organized gang.”

He stated that the tribunal “expressed its will to maintain the structure of Scientology in order to make it easier to control,” and “it gave this decision a national and international dimension so that potential victims can be warned of the methods of Scientology.”

Tommy Davis, the spokesman for Scientology’s Celebrity Center in Los Angeles has apparently been feeling the pressure of these recent events in his work as a spokesperson for the group. He appeared in a TV interview over the weekend with British broadcaster Martin Bashir who questioned him about reported physical abuses perpetrated on members as well as other matters of growing concern. This interview was all to be aired on an upcoming segment of Nightline.

It was this question, based upon one of L Ron Hubbard's teachings concerning the origins of the human race through Xenu, Emperor of the Galactic Confederacy, which led to Davis walking off the set declaring that the whole line of questioning was offensive: “Do you believe that a galactic emperor called Xenu brought his people to earth 75 million years ago and buried them in volcanoes?”

Based in Los Angeles, the controversial and esoteric group called the “Church of Scientology” was founded in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard who originally claimed it was not a religion. It now has approximately 12 million members worldwide and calls itself a church in some Nations.

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Randy Sly is the Associate Editor of Catholic Online. He is a former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church who laid aside that ministry to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church.