Many of you have seen the award-winning motion picture from the 1970s, The Godfather. A chilling film, it is about an aging patriarch of an organized crime family who transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son, Michael.  We see as the film goes along what this responsibility and the power that goes with it does to Michael’s soul.

The closing scene of The Godfather is particularly memorable. No, it is not the horse’s head discovered by a Hollywood producer in his bed. What an awful scene that was. Rather it’s a baptismal scene, of all things. Michael Corleone’s nephew is being baptized. And Michael is there participating, ironically, as the child’s godfather.

As the baptism is taking place, the film cuts to images showing the murders of the heads of five Mafia famili…