c. 2007 Religion News Service

Update: Judge Allows Coptic Christian to Stay

WASHINGTON (RNS) A Coptic Christian who feared torture if he was returned to Egypt will be allowed to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, a federal court in Pennsylvania has ruled.

Several human rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, lobbied the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to waive the deportation of 38-year-old Sameh Khouzam, which had been scheduled for Monday (June 18).

Khouzam was tortured and detained in Egypt when he refused to convert to Islam. After he fled to the U.S. for asylum in 1998, an Egyptian court found him guilty of murder.

Though the Egyptian government promised not to torture Khouzam should he return to the country, the District Court of Pennsylvania found compelling evidence that deporting him would cause irreparable harm.

In his decision Friday (June 15), Judge Thomas Vanaskie wrote, “While Khouzam may have no right to be in the United States, he most assuredly has a right not to be tortured.”

Human rights groups say Egypt has a record of torture, especially against Coptic Christians; the Ibn Khaldoun Research Center reports that Copts have suffered more than 120 major attacks in the past four decades. According to U.S. State Department statistics, 94 percent of Egypt’s population are Muslim while less than 6 percent are Christian.

_ Michelle C. Rindels

Italian City Mulling Charges Against `Da Vinci Code’ Filmmakers

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Italian prosecutors have reportedly opened an investigation that could lead to criminal obscenity charges against makers of the movie “The Da Vinci Code.”

According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the public prosecutor’s office in the city of Civitavecchia is investigating charges that the movie’s references to Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary violate the Italian penal code’s prohibition against the “publication of obscene spectacles.”

Director Ron Howard and nine other persons, including the film’s Italian importer and distributors, will be required to answer investigators’ queries, the paper reported.

The Civitavecchia prosecutor’s office would neither confirm nor deny the reports Monday (June 18), explaining that the status of pending criminal investigations is not public information.

The investigation was reportedly initiated in response to complaints from local clergy. Particularly offensive, according to lawyers who filed the complaint, are the film’s assertion that Jesus Christ fathered a child and its suggestion that the Holy Grail, in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of “The Last Supper,” symbolizes the Virgin Mary’s womb.

An aggravating factor, one of the lawyers noted, was that the film was shown to audiences of all ages in Italy. “Content so strong must not be offered to kids 12 or 13 years old, who go to catechism class and learn something completely different,” Giacinto Canzona told La Repubblica.

“The Da Vinci Code,” based on the best-selling thriller by Dan Brown, portrays the Roman Catholic Church as supported by an ancient and murderous conspiracy to conceal the true teachings and nature of Jesus Christ.

Civitavecchia, a port city of 50,000 people about 50 miles northwest of Rome, became internationally famous when a statue of the Madonna there apparently wept blood on 14 occasions over a period of months in 1995.

An investigation by the local diocese concluded 10 years later that the bleeding had “no human explanation and points at the mystery of the supernatural.”

_ Francis X. Rocca

New Orleans Archdiocese Readies for More Hurricanes

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Shaken by the ordeal of Hurricane Katrina, the Archdiocese of New Orleans, like many institutions, has been investing in hardware, planning and training to weather another disaster, church officials said.

A year ago, Catholic Charities, the charitable arm of the archdiocese, hired two full-time disaster planners to help the organization think through how to navigate the next emergency.

By the first anniversary of Katrina, the archdiocese had armored its communications systems for the next disaster. It set up check-in phone numbers, assigned key employees out-of-town cell phones less likely to fail, and safeguarded e-mail and Internet channels by moving computer servers upstate.

Now the plans are more elaborate, said Colleen D’Aquin, the new emergency management coordinator with Catholic Charities. As part of its plan, the church is prepared to get its own relief workers back on the ground as quickly as possible to work with other emergency responders.

Officials have formalized a years-old commitment to share crisis workers with the American Red Cross, according to Catholic Charities President Gordon Wadge, and developed a phone tree of sorts to spread important information through the system through an ordered hierarchy, said D’Aquin.

Archdiocesan leaders have formalized an agreement to move church offices to space loaned by the Diocese of Baton Rouge, and Catholic Charities employees will work out of a parish in Baton Rouge, D’Aquin said.

Key Catholic Charities employees, or those needed for early relief work, are being credentialed so they can return to New Orleans according to the city’s re-entry plan, she said.

In addition, D’Aquin has centralized and coordinated the evacuation plans for more than two dozen church-run nursing homes and residences for the disabled.

More broadly, D’Aquin said planners have begun to meet with clergy to brief them on emergency procedures contained in a new parish-based disaster manual that was modeled on a blueprint used by the Diocese of Galveston-Houston.

_ Bruce Nolan

Christian Reformed Church to Study Kids’ Access to Communion

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them,” Jesus told his disciples. But should that include taking Communion?

A lot of people in the Christian Reformed Church think so, but a lot don’t. So now a committee will help the church decide at what age young people should be able to partake of the Lord’s Supper.

The Faith Formation Committee has five years to come up with a statement on when youths should take Communion. At issue: whether children first must make a profession of faith, as now required, or whether being baptized is sufficient.

Those who feel any baptized child should have a place at the table got no support from the CRC’s recent Synod meeting here. Delegates soundly rejected a proposal to allow congregations that freedom while the study is under way.

A passionate two-hour debate showed how high emotions run on the issue. Some warned it could divide the CRC as badly as women’s ordination.

“This is an issue that gets to people deeper than who can serve in office, because it gets to the heart of the sacraments,” said the Rev. Tyler Wagenmaker, of Hudsonville, Mich.

He argued allowing any baptized child at Communion, including infants, would violate basic CRC doctrine that permits only those aware of their sins and Christ.

“It is not automatic that if you have grown up in a Christian family you have faith,” agreed the Rev. Matthew Ford, of California.

But some spoke of their children’s simple faith and sadness they cannot share in the bread and grape juice. Kids long for Christ’s invitation of love, they said.

“I want my children to be able … to taste it, to touch it,” said the Rev. James Poelman, of Sarnia, Ontario.

In a survey of CRC pastors, 25 percent said their churches’ children take Communion before a public profession of faith. Children begin taking it anywhere from ages 5 to 18, said John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.

_ Charles Honey

Quote of the Day: The Vatican’s “Drivers’ `Ten Commandments”’

(RNS) “Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.”

_ The Vatican’s “Driver’s `Ten Commandments,”’ issued Tuesday by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, urging safety and charity for motorists.

KRE/PH END RNS