"they might not understand"

First, an excerpt from John Allen's report:

. . . . Archbishop Myers told NCR on Feb. 22 that he has “no intention” of announcing communion bans against candidates in the 2008 presidential elections, a position he expects the “vast majority” of other American bishops to adopt as well.

Myers said debates over communion should not be restricted to politicians.

“Anyone should live their professional lives in accord with Catholic teaching,” he said. “People should be honest. If they’re struggling with one or another point, that’s one thing. But if over a spectrum of issues they are not in agreement with the church, they should withhold themselves from communion.”

As for formal bans, Myers said that while he “may have some sympathy” for the instinct behind such moves, he won’t do it himself, and regards them as “practically impossible to enforce.”

“For the most part, communion in this archdiocese is distributed by laypeople,” he said. “There’s a danger that they might not understand the issues so clearly, and end up imposing their own politics on who gets communion and who doesn’t.”

Second, a question or two:  What's really going on here?  Under the Archbishop's watch, "laypeople" are "[f]or the most part" in charge of distributing the Body and Blood of Christ, and those poor "laypeople" "might not understand" what, presumably, some other people (clergy?) could (and do?) understand ("clearly"?).  But even laypeople can read Redemptionis sacramentum and suspect that it is not being observed in New Jersey: 

"[158.] Indeed, the extraordinary minister of Holy Communion may administer Communion only when the Priest and Deacon are lacking, when the Priest is prevented by weakness or advanced age or some other genuine reason, or when the number of faithful coming to Communion is so great that the very celebration of Mass would be unduly prolonged.[259] This, however, is to be understood in such a way that a brief prolongation, considering the circumstances and culture of the place, is not at all a sufficient reason."

Little wonder, I suppose, that politicians wishing to abuse and injure the visible communion of the Church have pretty much a green light in New Jersey.  The clergy have effectively put the laity in charge of communion, the laity (we're told) don't know what's going on, and the politicans -- who we can be sure do know what's going on when they claim to have a right to receive communion while causing a scandal to the faithful by there persisent, public disregard of a central, nonnegotiable Church teaching -- are without benefit of Church leadership that will teach them that they are putting themselves outside the visible communion of the Church.  Pastoral prudence is called for, to be sure -- and it does not include saying in a news interview that the Church cannot protect the sacramental communion because she has turned it over to benighted laity. 

But this is how it works today.  My former pastor, as soon as he reached our parish, resurrected the practice of distributing communion at all Sunday Masses -- both those he celebrated and those celebrated by other priests.  A member of the parish who had long cherished serving unchecked as what the Church, but not she, refers to as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, informed the incoming pastor as follows: "I have a right to distribute communion that you can't take away just because you're the pastor."