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Concerning punishment of Catholics who violate the teaching on abortion, Would any bishop petition the Vatican to have a powerful Catholic politician excommunicated? Especially one that could retaliate in some way? Or would a popular Catholic priest be excommunicated for making abortions easier to get and increasing the number performed by making the practice legal? We both know from experience the answer to these questions. To actually follow through and excommunicate such persons might impose a cost the Catholic church is not willing to bear.

To answer this, since I assume that you are writing from an America-centric POV, none so far in this country. We do know of high level negotiations, but we have no evidence that any American Catholic politician has been excommunicated. As they should. I have berated our last bishop in public and had a good deal of diocesan support.

My mother shot down this kind of logic when I was about six years old by saying she didn't care what others did, I was not to set fire to the neighbor's chicken coop and then she thrashed me soundly. I wasn't any worse than the other kids so why should I get a beating? And some kids really were hoodlums unlike myself.

I cannot argue with that logic. It is a shame in Church history and was wrong then and is wrong now. Yet the Church has come to admit its faults over the last several centuries. Look at the Jews saved by the Vatican - through the Vatican gates - during WWII from the Nazis and Fascisti. Balancing virtue against the cost, pragmatism wins outs out everytime somehow.

No; the goodness of God wins out everytime, somehow. It is just so long in coming sometimes...

Paul commented that all the Scriptures written aforetime were written for our instruction and I would assume that includes Jesus’ illustrations. the moral of one is at Matt. 21:43.
I'm sure in 70 C.E., in Jerusalem, there were many who thought that since they were part of God's covenant nation God would never abandon them.
That was just the point, by not getting out they had lost out on a chance to be part of that “nation” producing the fruits of the kingdom.

“No; the goodness of God wins out everytime, somehow. It is just so long in coming sometimes...”

So does his justice but as Peter said, God only seems slow.
And so, “Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.” (2 Peter 3:14)