The “host” becomes the Body of Christ when the priest says the words, “This is My Body” during the Mass. The wine becomes the Blood of Christ when the priest says the words “This is My Blood.” Until that point, it is simply bread (of a sort) and wine.
Therefore, if somebody took unconsecrated hosts and wine from a Catholic Church, it would simply be theft, not blasphemy or desecration of sacred things. We don’t want to be wasteful or anything, but until the consecration, it’s just ordinary stuff.
The Bible says that God is present whenever two or more are gathered in His name. So God is already present at the Mass simply because the faithful have gathered together to honor Him with worship.
God cannot be "ordered" to transubstantiate the host and wine. No priest has that capacity. So, at most, the host and wine are transformed because God agrees to do so. The words "This is My Body" and "This is My Blood" cannot be more than a respectful, reverent invitation from the priest on behalf of the faithful for God to perform the tranformative act. The fact that the host and the wine are transformed is an entirely free and unconstrained act on the part of God for His own purposes. The fact that they are always transformed is a sign of God's lovingkindness to the community of believers.
God knows the intentions of each person's heart. It seems reasonable that, if a person receives a consecrated host with dishonest intent, God would know this instantly and cause the holy substance of the host to depart from it. To me, arguing that the holy substance of the host is somehow locked into it is the same as arguing that the priest does have the power to summon God to transform it and cause it to remain transformed until released through completion of the sacremental act.
That, of course, is impossible. God is no more "required" to keep the host in its holy state than He was "required" to transform it to begin with.
If this is the case, the moment that the student, or the professor, or anyone else helping them receives the consecrated host, God sees these impure intentions of their hearts and, to prevent its defilement, instantaneously transubstantiates the consecrated host back into an ordinary wafer. Therefore, the consecrated host can only be sacremental for those who receive and consume it in the same respectful and reverential spirit that invited (not caused) its transformation to begin with.
The atheist professor, the obnoxious student, the aiders and abetters of this controversy, no matter how cleaver, will never really possess a consecrated host because their own hearts reveal their deceit and cause its transformation back into ordinary stuff, as you put it.
“The “host” becomes the Body of Christ when the priest says the words, “This is My Body” during the Mass. The wine becomes the Blood of Christ when the priest says the words “This is My Blood.” Until that point, it is simply bread (of a sort) and wine.”
You sure about that, TC? You might want to check that. :)