Investigators also spoke to the priest, who said the woman had been told at an earlier Mass on Sunday that she had not fulfilled all the requirements for receiving communion and could not participate, officials said.
When she returned for a later service, the priest says she “attacked” him and “grabbed” a tray of communion wafers from his hands, the affidavit says.
“She informed the priest she did in fact do the steps necessary and is now accepted by God, thus, granting her the ability to participate,” an affidavit reports.
That’s when the priest “became upset and tried to ram the ‘cookie’ in her mouth,” she told police.
“In response … she attempted to grab another communion bread which (the priest) was holding. However, (he) grabbed her and bit her arm,” the affidavit says.
AFAIK, the priest does have the power to refuse communion to someone. But then again, a quick online search to confirm this gave me the following:
Can. 912 Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to holy communion.
Can. 915 Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.
Can. 916 A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.
And then, Catholics are enjoined to refrain from participating from mass or receiving communion if they’re aware of committing a grave sin and haven’t yet done the sacrament of confession.
The only way I can justify the priest’s prior actions given all this is if the woman has been explicitly (visible to all the people in the church) committing grave sin. Or is known by the congregation that the woman is committing grave sin.
However, from the other places, it seems that the advice is to privately convince the person to refrain from participating in communion. Assuming the priest has done this in that previous mass, and the woman escalated the situation by reaching for the communion wafers, I could understand the priest going wild. Afterall, the priest has a duty to ensure the sanctity of the communion wafers.
That the priest’s first impulse in this situation is to bite the woman still is funny to me though. Was his hands and arms already otherwise occupied?
Of course, all I’ve said above (TL;DR: the priest can possibly bar someone from participating in the holy communion, that the priest has a duty of keeping the sanctity of the consecrated hosts) still doesn’t excuse the priest from being charged with assault and battery. I feel this part needs to be said out loud.
And since I’m already quoting the Roman Catholic Canon law, I think this one’s most apropos:
Can. 909 A priest is not to neglect to prepare himself properly through prayer for the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and to offer thanks to God at its completion.