Actually she might not. A 30 year old Catholic who maybe hasn’t stepped inside a church since confirmation (if then) and who had the tragically bad catechesis common to many if not most Catholics in the last 50 years may not realize at ALL that she should not receive communion.
She may have been attending sporadically at Protestant churches where Communion was freely available. She may have little to no recollection of a Catholic mass but she probably did receive and just considers it ‘what one does’.
I know 60 something Catholics, full on education with Catholic sisters for 12 years, decades of attendance, fully literate, with the tools and the read knowledge, who have been ‘away’ from the Church for a few years and insist that Sunday Mass is not ‘obligatory’ for them if they wake up and have a backache, or don’t want to have to ‘rush’, or just don’t feel like going. People in the family have talked until they’re blue in the face but “that isn’t how I see it, and I’m following my conscience”. If that’s the attitude from somebody twice this young woman’s age who had all the ‘best’ education, why would we expect any different from somebody who didn’t have all that wonderful an education and has also probably been told by these 60 somethings (whom she would consider experts or knowledgeable) that Sunday Mass is optional and that the Eucharist is a ‘right’?
