The document, “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road”, recently issued by the Vatican, is timely and, in particular ways, speaks directly to our local situation where road deaths continue to grow at an alarming rate. But the document deals with much more than the ills of modern day driving.

The 36-page statement falls into four parts – the first deals with road users, the second and third with street women and street children and the fourth with homelessness. Comprehensive and rich in its insights, it could easily have been shaped into three or four separate documents. What makes the connection between the parts is the road and what happens there.

The document devotes a number of pages to the phenomenon of street children, which it sums up as “the most difficult and worrying challenges of our century for both the Church and civil society”. It states further that “street children are a reflection of the society in which they live”.

The problem as identified in the statement again rings true to our local experience where some of our children run away from home “after being neglected or mistreated” and others have been thrown out of home because they were involved in some form of deviant behaviour.

The document does not stop at identifying the problem but looks at its causes and proposes some concrete steps to correct it, which require thoughtful study and calls for the integration of several initiatives.

The document spends most time talking about road users. As expected it talks about the road as a communication route, one where in 2000 alone, over one million people lost their lives and where 90 per cent of the accidents were due to human error. But it also sees the road as a special communication environment that gives rise to a particular “spirituality”.

Joint efforts

The road is an environment with its own structure and messages, conditioning those who make use of it, whether as pedestrians or motorists. The document notes that “a driver’s personality is different from a pedestrian’s personality”.

Some people start up an engine, the document states, “to join a race, in order to escape from the troubling pace of everyday life” and road signs may be perceived by some as a restriction to their freedom. Further, driving a car provides an easy opportunity “to dominate others”. It recognises that “mobility” has become an idol, symbolised by the car and calls for joint efforts to raise awareness of the ethical and human requirements that arise from mobility, which should become “an element of communion amongst people”.

The Word of God, the document says, “illuminates the road”. It points to the experience of wanderings and travel recorded there, “with its risks, satisfactions and troubles” and “its link with God’s redeeming plan”.

The readings of this Sunday’s liturgy speak to all of this. Ellisha follows the prophet Elijah along the road, becoming servant to the one he will eventually succeed. In the Gospel, Luke discloses that Jesus “resolutely” takes the road for Jerusalem. When he encounters opposition along the way, he leads his disciples in another direction that provides an opportunity for others to follow him.

But Luke here records that each one allows his personal problems to become an obstacle to following the one who is the Way.

It will be a pity if this most useful document is dismissed as “superficial”, by those who have not taken the time to study it and see its implications – both for all that happens on the road and one’s spiritual life.

Archbishop's Column - Moral theology and road safety