So a faithful Catholic goes to the altar with the intent of receiving communion, is given the wafer, and at that very moment decides not to take communion right now after all. Gets up and leaves, still holding the wafer. No fraudulent intent, no misrepresentation, just a change of schedule.
I don’t see where any compelling argument can be made that a crime has been committed.
If it were a crime, someone would have brought charges against one of the players in this whole shebang. (Also)
Prove there were any pretenses. Prove that the recipent knowingly pretended to or agreed to anything.
Prove that Catholic expectations for receiving the host have any applicability in law.
You are mixing up different issues here.
The question is whether intentionally attending a Mass for the purpose of taking a part of the sacred regalia - the host (and later descecrating it) it in breach of any law.
I have produced three examples of statutes which would be breached by this. In each case, the “wrong” lies in taking property under false pretences of some sort.
None require any “agreement”. The notion that a person intending to use a host for desecration is doing so in simple ignorance of the “rules of Catholicism” is sheer nonsense - obviously they know it is wrong.
Your OP asks one thing but here you are asking another. You asked if it was a crime, and by the letter of the law that Malthus cited it absolutely could be considered a crime.
Proving that a specific recipient knew or pretended something intentionally would be the role of the prosecutor in a specific criminal case, and the facts of the case and the jury and how the prosecutor presented the argument and how the judge ran the court would all influence how it turned out.
If you’re wanting a “real world” answer I bet you can’t find a cite in the last 100 years where someone has been convicted of fraud for taking a communion wafer under false pretenses, and I’ll even bet you can’t find anyone who has been arrested for that crime.
But if you just want to know if “in theory” could it violate a statute, that is the sort of answer you’ve been given, and that’s the sort of thing lawyers do think about from time to time. Laws are both theory and practice, and lots of things can be technically against a law but never have been demonstrated by application to be so, and the suspicion might be that no court would proceed with a case if the issue was extremely trivial or nonsensical.
In the case of fraud, the amount defrauded causes an elevation in punishment and the value of a communion wafer is below one cent most likely, so I doubt this will ever be tested in court.
There’s no contract: one essential element of a contract is consideration, and the person receiving the wafer is offering no consideration in exchange for it.
However, a person attending a church service ought to know that the church has rules about who can take part in the service. That’s just the same as you ought to know that, attending a sporting event, there are rules that a spectator should follow. For example, at a football game, a spectator is not allowed to run onto the field, take the ball, and score a goal – and a spectator should know that sort of thing without being told the specific rule.
Did some Catholic priest try to have someone arrested over this?
I ask because some of the “it’s not a crime” replies seem to be directed antagonistically towards the Catholic Church, and not towards a random messageboard poster who brought it up, as though they’re arguing with the Catholic Church not a random messageboard poster.
Has the Catholic Church tried to indicate that it is a crime?
An issue I think the state needs to stay out of.
No, because Myers very cleverly did not himself obtain hosts to desecrate - he solicited (anonymous) other persons to do so. Prosecuting them would be effectively impossible, as there is no proof that they were in fact consecrated hosts stolen from a church.
[Moderating]
Diogenes, it is not required that the posters in this thread “prove” anything. Several relevant statutes have been provided, which is what you requested in the OP. Whether or not a particular person committed fraud under these statutes would need to be decided in a court of law; it’s not going to be decided in this thread.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Perhaps estoppal would come into play…
OK, so that’s one explanation of why they didn’t go after Myers. Why didn’t they prosecute the college kid who set the whole thing off to begin with? Why did the Catholic League stop at threats?
It’s not necessarily standard, but the Sunday bulletin in our church gives instructions for receiving communion and also explains who may partake. (Episcopalian church)
I don’t know if this meets the standards of a legal contract, but it’s certainly implied that anyone who goes up for communion is presenting themself as (1)baptised and (2) intending to consume the wafer as part of the sacramental liturgy taking place.
No, the quiestion whether palming the wafer without eating it is a crime. Intentions are irrelevant.
You have not shown that any of those statutes are applicable or that it is illegal to receive a host under “false pretenses.” What pretnses? What did the recipient pretend to?
How can this possibly be true? How can a person do something under “false pretenses” without being aware of it?
Who said anything about “intending desecration?”
What does “wrong” mean, and what does that word have to do with the legal question?
In the case of the student that spawned those discussion, the kid didn’t even leave the room (which was a campus student union, not a church). He took the host intending to eat it, but brought it back to his seat first because he wanted to show it to his friend before he did so. Is that “theft?” Would any prosecutor ever charge him? For that action, the kid was accused of “hate crimes,” “kidnapping” and received multiple death threats, but he was never charged with anything. why not?
if they were given out at communion, they weren’t stolen.
Relevant statutes have been provided here. Since the OP appears to be more interested in debating than in simple factual information, it is more appropriate to continue this in the original thread in Great Debates; this discussion is redundant here. I am closing this thread.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator