As a priest you meet all sorts of interesting people and you do discover the sort of information that is not usually bandied about in general conversation. Needless to say you are bound by the seal of professional confidentiality, and in some cases by the most sacred seal of all, that of the confessional, which can never be broken in any circumstances. This is something that non-Catholics struggle with, but if the seal were not in place, no one, me included, would ever dream of confessing to a priest. And that people can confess to a priest and be utterly sure that their confession will be secret forever is a great boon to humanity. Think of all those poor souls who have never been able to open up to anyone on earth, apart from a priest.
The following nuggets do interest me, and I am not breaking any confidences. A source tells me that he knows the price list of a certain criminal group operating today. It is revelatory.
To have someone frightened costs £2,000. This will perhaps entail kidnapping them, locking them in a car boot, shouting at them, threatening them, in short frightening the life out of them. But not hurting them physically, though, one has to say that being frightened in this way sounds pretty traumatic.
To have someone hurt costs £4,000. This means having them beaten up, and their bones broken, perhaps having them shot in the legs. But not killed. This is presumably the treatment meted out to those who do not co-operate after being frightened.
To have someone killed costs £10,000. Presumably the person to be killed has already been frightened, already been physically assaulted. Perhaps they had at least two chances to avoid the ultimate penalty. One wonders if everyone gets these two chances. But chiefly one is aghast that it costs so little, and that human life is so cheap.
In certain societies life was cheap. One thinks of the Wild West. I can well remember as a child watching westerns and being shocked by the ease with which men killed each other, and their easy access to lethal weapons. Sadly the Wild West still exists in the minds of some. There are societies today where there is no order and where the rule of law does not exist: Somalia is one, but there are plenty of others, indeed dozens of others, which is very worrying and frightening. But that one can have someone murdered for £10,000 in a country where there is the rule of law invites reflection.
If someone undertakes to murder someone for that sum, and they are making their living in this way, they are presumably carrying out rather a lot of murders, and they are not frightened of getting caught. It is a sign that policing and deterrence have failed. It is a sign too of the greatest moral depravity. But it gets worse. If people will kill for a sum as nugatory as £10,000, this is a sign that we have created a society where this sort of crime is, well, to some people at least, acceptable.
May God preserve us all. Of course, my source may be wrong, and the information may be exaggerated. But these things do happen.