Celebrity news is not a big part of what we do here, but when a story is about an actor as colorful as Mark Wahlberg, don’t you want to know some of the details when the headline is as provocative as this one?
Mark Wahlberg Gets No Respect At Church
Sure, it’s an entertainment news site (a young, hip GetReligion reader spotted this recent blurb and sent the link). Still, you print a story that is rooted in religion and readers may want to ask questions. So what’s the deal?
Entourage has become a curse for Mark Wahlberg on Sundays — because people approach him in church with story lines and requests to be on the hit show. Wahlberg, who is the producer of the series — which is based on his early days in Hollywood, admits a family trip to church has become a business meeting and he’d like others to leave him alone when he’s worshiping.
He says, “I go to church and people ask me if they can be on Entourage, what’s gonna happen. I go to church to worship, I don’t go to church to talk about it. The stuff that I did with my entourage back in the day is stuff that I’m not proud of and I’m asking forgiveness for; I don’t want things brought up in church, but, if you go to church in Beverly Hills, those kind of things happen.”
And his fellow worshipers don’t just bug him about Entourage. He adds, “I get scripts, resumes, books — people tried to come up to me with a children’s book before and I wouldn’t take it. They got upset with me. This is church.”
This man has had a pretty colorful life — in and out of the public eye. His beautiful girlfriend and their children together have ended up in the public eye quite a bit. Those nutty celebrity photographers love them.
So, OK, I will ask the obvious question: Even in an entertainment short, shouldn’t it tell us where he goes to church? Don’t you want to know?
Well, this is why we have search engines. The information that shows up there makes the pitched-in-church story even more interesting. Read this, from yet another entertainment biz site:
Mark Wahlberg has confirmed he and partner Rhea Durham are going to for a small, intimate wedding when they finally marry next year. The couple began dating in 2001 and have three children together — five year old daughter Ella, two year old son Michael and newborn son Brendan — but Mark … revealed he only now feels ready to commit to marriage.”
Where? A Catholic parish. No celebrity photographers allowed. You were expected a more liberal or progressive sanctuary?
Well, the assumption is that this is a parish in California.
 | Posted at 11:46 pm |  Print
| Permalink | Trackback |
Comments (8) |
November 12, 2008, at 11:53 pm
Yep, “what sort of church?” was definitely a question I’d wanted answered. I must admit to even thinking - hopefully - that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen at a Catholic Parish. Humble pie accepted! I once bit back the urge to argue with my very pro-choice governer at mass (after all but bumping into her in a doorway), figuring it just wasn’t approperiate, during the height of the John Kerry Communion controversy. I guess that’s the sort of celebrity I’m more interested in!
November 13, 2008, at 2:42 am
Is this the guy who used to be called Vanilla Ice? He was a rapper right? As soon as he said “ask forgiveness” I knew it was Catholic but it should have been put in the story. (I know that Protestants and Orthodox ask to be forgiven, too. Don’t flame me, bro.)
November 13, 2008, at 5:41 am
Beg to differ. If the whole point of the story was that the guy wants some privacy in church, to publish the name of the church he attends would have been contradictory. Fans and celebrity hounds would go there just to see him, and what little privacy he has would have been further eroded. Kudos to the reporter for discretion and respect!
November 13, 2008, at 7:24 am
Mark Wahlberg was a pop star called Marky Mark and his group was the Funky Bunch. He has been an underwear model for Calvin Klein and appeared in many movies and tv shows. No I’m not an enormous fan - but googling a person’s name can give you basic facts. It is relevant to the story to talk about the denomination of Wahlberg’s choice of church. I didn’t get the impression tmatt was saying to publish the address or precise congregation.Totally not journalistic just curious- I’d like to know what kind of church group is this rude to someone?
November 13, 2008, at 9:44 am
If not the name of the parish itself, specifying that he’s a Catholic would have been appropriate, at least.
Frankly, this does raise a lot of issues about religion and how people use it. And yes, “use” is the right word here.
November 13, 2008, at 10:06 am
If people are asking him all that stuff at a Catholic Church in front of the Blessed Sacrament that completely changes this story. It goes from a story about people being rude and disrespectful to people possibly committing mortal sin if they know what they’re doing (many Catholics don’t).
November 13, 2008, at 12:34 pm
If the denomination is newsworthy, the parish would be too. We learned a lot from the fact that John Kerry went to Mass in Boston at the Paulist Center (very liberal) not at Holy Trinity (conservative/Latin Mass).
November 14, 2008, at 11:41 am
If you do a search on Wahlberg and Catholicism you will find tons of interesting articles of a young Boston Catholic struggling with the moral issues surrounding modern celebrity.
He had a priest help pull him out of a life of petty crime. He says he feels guilty about having sex before marriage, and also that he goes to confession.
Very interesting stuff.