Repairing the road to perdition

By Paul Schratz

Top 10 lists have a way of grabbing people's attention, whether they're on late-night TV shows or in newspapers and magazines. This popular convention is now being used by the Vatican to address some serious moral issues of the day.

As one reporter put it to me, "Well, you guys had the original Top 10 list, didn't you?"

Yes, I suppose we did, which perhaps justifies Rome releasing a document entitled Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road, and publicizing it with its Ten Commandments for drivers, starting with, "You shall not kill."

However, there's been more than a little cynicism that Rome used a Top 10 list in confronting dangerous driving, rather than directing its attention to something "big" like abortion, euthanasia, or global poverty.

Most of the comments I've heard and read suggest the Vatican would be better off spending its time on more important issues. Getting a consensus on those issues, however, would be tough:

• When the Church speaks about abortion, it's told to butt out.
• When it addresses stem-cell research it's accused of trying to shut down progress.
• When it ventures an opinion on war, it's told to mind its own business.
• When it gets in involved in matters like liturgy or education it's accused of being reactionary.
• When it comments on the media it's charged with encouraging censorship.

Each of these is a topic that Rome has addressed in recent weeks, and each was, in some people's eyes, an intrusion into matters that don't concern the Church.

(The fact that each got less attention than the drivers' document suggests using the Top 10 List format wasn't such a bad idea.)

Ironically, the only thing with which most people would agree the Church should concern itself, poverty, gets addressed in spades in the driving document. The liberation of street women and the care of the homeless are major components of the 59-page instruction issued by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Travellers.

That's because the instruction is concerned with putting roads "at the service of the human person, as tools for facilitating life and the integral development of society."

The document says "a great deal of a country's lifeblood moves along its roads," but you can bet that if Rome hadn't used a Top 10 list format, a fraction of the people who are now aware of this instruction would have been.

In a nutshell, the document states that roads "should constitute a communication bridge between peoples, thereby creating new economic and human spaces." Instead roads become an occasion of sin for impatient motorists, an avenue to iniquity by offering a means to access prostitutes, or a residence for the homeless. The Vatican wants society to consider the highways and byways as tools to communication and charity, and it's releasing this instruction at an opportune time. From a purely local perspective:

• We're beginning summer, with the heavy vacation travel season and the road carnage that follows. Drivers without air conditioning can expect to be even more tempted into road rage.
• Vancouver now has an all-traffic-report radio station catering to the masses of frustrated drivers out there. (The document suggests Catholic radio be introduced as an alternative).
• The city is in virtual 24/7 gridlock thanks to the RAV transit project.
• Construction sites are booming all over the city, and trying to figure out how much time to allot for driving to an appointment is now a crapshoot.

Sadly, many people starting their summer holidays right now won't be alive at the end of them. Last year almost 3,000 Canadians died in motor vehicle accidents, an appalling figure.

So, regardless of whether people think Rome should have addressed this topic in the way it did, the issue is now on people's radar. If I worked for ICBC or BCAA, I'd be reprinting the Drivers' 10 Commandments right now.

As a driver, I also realize dangerous driving is probably something more of us should be confessing in the confessional.