Ten commandments for drivers

It took a few hundred years for the Catholic Church to recognize Protestants as something more than heretics. It took a couple hundred years for the Catholic Church to recognize modernity as something worth engaging rather than fighting. And it seems now that the Catholic Church has finally recognized driving!

As many news sources have already reported, on Tuesday the Vatican released “ten commandments” on driving. The commandments seek to protect basic Christian virtues and practices, such as hospitality, courtesy, and charity. The first driving commandment is also plagiarized from the original decalogue: “You shall not kill.” As Jon Stewart noted on Wednesday’s Daily Show, perhaps the most intriguingly ambiguous commandment is the fifth: “Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.”

Here are the “ten commandments on driving” in full:

1. You shall not kill.
2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.
3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.
4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.
5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.
6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.
7. Support the families of accident victims.
8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.
9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.
10. Feel responsible toward others.