Choose Life!
Updated 2002-10-27 16:00:00
Anyway. Jeffrey and his lawyer leave the room, presumably to go out to the car and talk about how creepy Horatio is. Or they could be wondering how anyone could take a string of dubious assumptions and somehow turn them into a case for infanticide. I can accept that for people who are pregnant and excited about it, the embryo or fetus they're carrying becomes, for them, a person to plan for. However, there is no legal foundation for this kind of sentiment -- there may be in November, when the Bush administration deploys its federal fetal healthcare plan, but there isn't at the moment. For Horatio to go building a case on a seven-week-old embryo is really pretty extreme. It's also pretty stupid; if this guy had no difficulty torching someone because he was averse to the idea of children, what makes Horatio think he'll crumble in the face of a Photoshopped toddler?
Cut to a Catholic church, where they're playing "Amazing Grace," a hymn I've never really heard in conjunction with a funeral mass. Sure, St. Jerome's went through a Godspell phase back in the 1970s where the opening processional took place to "Prepare Ye The Way Of The Lord," but we were all still giddy from Vatican II back then. Even then, we never got so giddy as to appropriate such Protestant all-stars as "What A Friend We Have In Jesus" or "The Old Rugged Cross." Oh, I'm sorry -- my subconscious is apparently working on a book proposal, because there aren't enough people exorcising their Catholic upbringing in print. Anyway, it's Father Carlos's funeral, and the patricidal Cameron Medina is serving as an altar boy. This leads to a small theological debate on the sofa:
The husband: They're letting a confessed murderer attend the funeral mass of a priest?
Me: Well, I guess if he confessed and truly repented of his sin, it's possible. It doesn't seem to be in good taste, what with his mom having killed the deceased.
The husband: No, no, no. They're letting a confessed murderer attend the funeral mass of a priest?
Me: Forgiveness and redemption are big themes, you know. I just wonder how the rest of the parish feels about this.
Well, since that parish evidently includes Horatio and Megan, I'm guessing that the answer is "broody." As the funeral procession passes, I wonder if Megan is mentally comparing her husband's funeral to this one. Anyway, Cameron reaches the narthex of the church and is met by Sevilla and a deputy; evidently, he's going back to juvie as soon as he takes off the robes. As "Amazing Grace" winds down, Horatio leaves the picture of the hypothetical toddler at the foot of a statue of the Virgin Mary. And this episode ends, leaving many things -- among them, how the allegedly guilty Jeffrey would have done any number of things that led to the murder of Lisa, what a condom was doing in Father Carlos's pocket, why someone guilty of the mortal sin of murder was attending a priest's funeral, how folic acid levels are directly linked to a specific stage in pregnancy -- unexplained.