I am a sacristano and since I am clumsy I end up dropping a lot of altar bread around (the packets are wierd), so I eat them since I wake up to late for breakfast.
They don't really stop hunger.
Second, I think a legal protection for the Church might be setting up some type of WARNING, enter at your own risk, any defilement of the consecrated species (the forms of bread and wine) will warant physical attack.
Then if they do they can't say they were not warned!!!
Charity starts with God. He has rights, respect them.
And Justice is not contrary to Charity, but rather a last sort form of it.

It begs the question - what was he going to do with these eucharists? We need more information about this guy. Is he mentally disabled, a liberal rabble rouser or did he have some nefarious intention for the eucharist?

John sounds like some other anti-religious bigots who've posted of late.
No attack on Christianity too ridiculous to defend, no defense too strained to consider.
Maybe the guy was... hungry! Yeah, that's the ticket. Heck, run it up the flagpole, maybe some poor sap will believe it.
Remember, the enemies of the Church must be presumed always to be the victim in any exchange, and must be assumed to operate only from the purest motives, no matter how much it taxes the imagination.
The Church is always the oppressor. Get that through your heads. Good. Now you're ready to be a religion reporter for a major newspaper.

If he were hungry and afraid to ask for help, he could have stolen unconsecrated hosts (or if it were a typical parish, donuts from the parish hall). Or if he weren't too embarrassed he could have asked the priest for help after Mass. Either method would have been more discrete than stealing the Eucharist in the middle of Mass.
The cost of a consecrated host is not a few cents. Is the cost of a Michelangelo painting worth the cost of the canvas and paint or a sculpture worth the cost of the stone?

Dear John
Come off it. If a person was hungry and I mean physically hungry there are soup kitchens and relief for the homeless and hungry. Committing a sacrilege is another. If you truly believe that the Host is the Body and Blood of Our Lord then you would see this in the spiritual rather then the physical. And also at the Holy Mass those so called handful of wafers are Our Lord Jesus Christ. Stop being liberal in your ideas.

Has it occurred to anyone that the "thief" may have been hungry?
Recall Jesus' words in Matthew 12:3-4, in which He excused David and his men for eating the showbread when they were hungry. The showbread was reserved to the priests, and normally it was not lawful for others to eat it.
The cost of a handful of communion wafers is a few cents. A person is not obliged, morally or legally, to risk physical injury to himself and others to prevent them from being stolen, and in my view, anyone who does, is acting imprudently.

You don't suppose this is yet another atheist fundamentalist trying to pull a PZM?

"The man was stopped by a couple of parishioners, aged 66 and 82. Yeah! Go old Catholic dudes!"
Mr. Jones...
My sentiments exactly. :)

Yeah.
This seems like an unarguable case of theft where physical restraint has clear legal warrant.
In the case of an ostensible worshiper who seems to be making off with one host dispensed to him by the priest, but who might, in ignorance, have more or less innocent motives, I would argue that other worshipers have a moral right if necessary to restrain him, and might have a legal case as well, but in our litigious society I'm not sure it would be prudent or necessary to incur charges of assault by physically restraining him.
However, if a man grabs a handful of hosts, that's theft, case closed. One should still respond in charity, but charity doesn't mean you can't pin him if necessary.