[Centurion2000]

Stealing a communion host is no different from walking into a church and peeing on the alter.

It's a lot different. One is misappropriation of what most people are going to call a piece of bread. The other is destruction / vandalization of private property.

If you give someone the host, it becomes their personal property; THEY get to decide what to do with it.

[OpusatFR]

Remind me not to let you put your hands on The Torah.

[DManA]

If you steal a host you are taking church property by fraud. You aren't given a host to do with it as you please. You are given it for specific religious purposes. If you are taking communion and don't believe the doctrine of that church you are there under false pretenses.

[wideawake]

If you give someone the host, it becomes their personal property; THEY get to decide what to do with it.

A person is given the host contingent upon an understanding of terms. By not agreeing to those terms, the host is being appropriated under false pretenses by Myers types, and this constitutes fraud and theft.

Here's an analogy: a man goes to a free clinic complaining of horrible pain and is given morphine to ease his suffering. In reality, he is a recreational drug abuser who has lied in order to score some free morphine.

The latter individual is clearly a criminal. If the free clinic pressed charges - and if the free clinic was operated by the Catholic Church - would the decision to press charges constitute a theocratic act?

[Mad Dawg]

If you give someone the host, it becomes their personal property; THEY get to decide what to do with it.

I don't think it's that simple. How is there a conveyance of title?

In the Catholic Church a host is given to a lay person for him to consume or, in extraordinary cases, for him to convey to another person for THAT person to consume. In really rare cases it may be given to be kept in a suitable place for adoration or exhibition.

It would be an interesting case to hear, but I don't think it's a slam dunk.