June 21, 2007
 
COMMENTARY: Vatican No Help When Stuck in Traffic
 
By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service
 
Washington, DC (SHNS) -- The Vatican, a state that at 108 acres is too small to have traffic jams, much less road rage, has issued Ten Commandments intended to ease both.
 
Over here, automotive commandments tend to come in bumper-sticker form, like the religiously themed "If you want to know whether there's an after-life, just mess with this truck." (Inscription sanitized for your protection.)
 
The first commandment -- actually No. 5 on the original tablet -- is "You shall not kill." Hard to quarrel with that. The second is, "The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm" -- meaning don't hurt anybody either.
 
The commandments are the work of Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Vatican's office of migrant and itinerant people (surely this sounds better in Latin) and who became alarmed at U.N. figures showing that 1.2 million people a year die in vehicle crashes.
 
The church tries to take care of its flock's other needs, so it's only logical and proper that it try to keep the faithful from plowing into the back of an 18-wheeler.
 
Martino sounds like a gentle, not to say naive, soul. Commandment No. 3 says, rather like a fortune cookie, "Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events." Try sharing that thought on the Jersey Turnpike at rush hour.
 
But in a news conference to introduce the commandments, the cardinal said thoughtless driving leads to "impoliteness, rude gestures, cursing, blasphemy, loss of sense of responsibility." His biography says he served as a Vatican diplomat in Manhattan, so he knows whereof he speaks.
 
While in this country, he surely must have seen some TV car commercials. Yet Commandment No. 5 enjoins, "Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin." There goes a whole bunch of marketing campaigns. What else is a hulking-great SUV for if not power and domination? "Blessed are the meek" is not going to move a whole lot of Hummers off the lot.
 
The cardinal probably wouldn't go for this because it's a little too Old Testament, but I would be a whole lot more inclined to exercise courtesy, uprightness and prudence if he could find a way for me to inflict biblical plagues -- only on the deserving, mind you.
 
Driving home the other night, a guy in an expensive sports car, a Porsche, raced passed a whole line of cars waiting for a red light by blasting up the right-turn-only lane and then cutting back into line, forcing me to stomp hard on the brakes.
 
Now, if Martino could see his way clear, I would like to fill that Porsche with flies, lice, frogs, locusts, hail, sick livestock and darkness, and cover the driver with boils. I'd feel better and he would be a better driver for it. You don't want to know what sick livestock will do to leather upholstery.
 
To show my generosity of spirit, I would forgo turning his antifreeze into blood. Cardinal Martino's commandments are working already.
 
Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD@SHNS.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com
 
Editor's Note: The Porsche incident reminded this writer -- a former Porsche (a tame 1964 356C) owner -- about the question: What's the difference between a porcupine and a Porsche? Answer: With a Porsche, the prick's on the inside! --David M. Kinchen