I put the question of criminality up in a separate GQ thread. Hopefully we can get some lawyers to give us a definitive answer.
There is no relevant difference between grabbing a wafer from a priest and sneaking one.
Being given a wafer is not “sneaking” one.
What part of “palming” is not “sneaking”?
You are given the wafer for a particular purpose. the only way you can leave the church without fulfilling that purpose is to hide it, as a shoplifter hides the swag. That is the very definition of “sneaking”.
he didn’t palm it until after it was given to him and became his own property.
This will get you nowhere as a theory to charge somebody with theft. Cook made no such promise and was aware of no such agreement.
You cannot shoplift what is freely given you. Is it against the law to put in my pocket a cracker that a store has given me to sample?
If he thought he was committing no wrong, why did he “palm” it?
Because it is not “freely” given to you. It is given only for a certain purpose. In this case, for communion. You can’t take it for desecration.
The store is not analogous, because the store employees will not forcibly prevent you from leaving if you simply walk out with a cracker, and do not care if you desecrate it.
We’re not talking about a “wrong.” That’s purely subjective. We’re talking about whether it’s actually a crime. It ain’t.
Having said that, Cook apparently knew he was expected to eat the wafer, and knew it might be perceived as rude if he didn’t. That’s not the same thing as showing awareness of some grievous “wrong,” much less a crime.
Sometimes my daughters like to experiment in the kitchen with baking things, and the results aren’t always great. I have, on occasion, pretended to accept a less than stellar “cookie” or “brownie,” only to hide it and covertly dispose of it later. Am I doing “wrong” when I do that?
What if the next door neighbor offers me hockey puck cookies, and I palm one then toss it when I get home. Have I done “wrong?”
All you have to do is show me where it is written down for the parishioner what may or may not be done with the communion wafer. I’d even accept a verbal statement given before communion. Until then, the church’s expectations as to what will be done won’t matter a whit in a court of law.
Cook made no such agreement.
Maybe it was written somewhere on the church bulletin, or on the back of the wafer?
I’ve sat through scores, probably hundreds of Catholic masses and have never heard the priest or anyone else make any verbal statements about what may or may not be done with the host after it’s received. They don’t even say out loud that you have to be Catholic to receive it. A person unfamiliar with Catholic beliefs and practices would not be informed of these things during mass, and could easily receive the wafer and take it home without any idea that they were breaking any rules.
He doesn’t need to make any express “agreement”. He presented himself for the sacrament, which only believing, baptised Catholics are supposed to do. By so doing, he impliedly represented himself to be one - and that he would follow the sacramental procedures.
Is a claim being made that it is actually against the law to take Communion under false pretenses?
Any notion that he had no idea what he was doing was wrong is negated by the fact that he allegedly “palmed” the host.
Obviously, if he truly did not understand that what he was doing was wrong, no crime was committed - intentionality, or mens rea, is part of the definition.
No, the claim is that taking of property under false pretences is a crime.
The communion wafer is the property under discussion here, so there is no difference.
Sure there is. Merely attending the mass without following the Catholic rules is a different thing from attending a mass to steal a wafer for later desecration. The latter is the subject of the thread, not the former.
There is no evidence that Cook intended to desecrate the wafer.