Of Dog Poop and the Pope, by Virginia Jones, Garden of Roses, May 7, 2010

Of Dog Poop and the Pope

By Virginia Jones
Garden of Roses
May 7, 2010

http://web.me.com/virginiajones/Compsassionate_Gathering/The_Garden_of_Roses/Entries/2010/5/6_Of_Dog_Poop_and_the_Pope.html

I rent out a room in my house to help pay the bills. Lots of people don't want to live with a mom and kids. Too much noise, I guess, and maybe it is uncomfortable to live in a house so dominated by others. I have my concerns too. My kids are not so young anymore, 11 and a few days away from 14. And, with me as a Mom, they know all about sex abuse and sexual predators. We have talked over and over again about safe touch and inappropriate behaviors and "recognize, refuse, report". So when a young woman who spent the last three years living in a Buddhist meditation center answered my ad for a room for rent I was delighted. Not only was she a "would be" Buddhist nun, but she taught literacy in an after school program so she had been fingerprinted. What could be safer for kids other than no renter at all? She came with a big, happy dog, but that is alright. We're dog lovers. Our cat hates the dog, but he is adjusting.

My daughter has long wanted a dog, but as a former dog owner, I feared how much work a dog can be. I asked my daughter if she was ready to walk the dog multiple times a day and run daily poop patrols in the back yard. She enthusiastically declared that she was but as her mother, I know better.

"We'll see," I said. "When you do one hundred percent of the gerbil care and the cat care without help from me, then we'll get a dog."

We haven't gotten a dog yet, but an adult renter with a pet dog seemed like a good compromise. We could do some of the fun stuff -- pet the dog, play with the dog, and take the dog for a walk, and the renter could do the not so fun stuff like scooping up the poop in the back yard. When she signed the lease, I charged her a pet deposit, and I told her that she would need to run frequent fur vacuum patrols and pet poop patrols in the back yard.

The renter assured me there would be no problem.

A few weeks later when I was pulling weeds out of my Buttercups, I noticed dog poop nestled among the flowers. I was annoyed but willing to give the renter a chance. Maybe it was hard to see the poop among the dark, chocolate green leaves of the ornamental flowers. I watched that poop as the days passed. It remained nestled among the Buttercups until the leaves grew over it and hid it. Then, a few weeks later, as I was mowing the lawn, I noticed the poop on the grass on the edge of the lawn. I had to mow around it. I waited to say anything to the renter. Dog poop appearing in the yard twice in a space of a couple weeks was a bit too often for me not to say something. The next day the dog poop was still there so I mentioned it. The renter promptly did nothing. I waited for another 24 hours and picked up the poop myself, but I was more annoyed than the first time.

A couple weeks later more dog poop appeared again in the yard. This time I didn't wait to tell the renter.

"I haven't let Maria (the dog) into the yard unsupervised since you told me that last time," the renter said.

"Are you saying that another dog pooped in my yard?" I asked. "That has only happened a couple times in the 13 years I've owned this house."

My yard is fenced, but there is a hole in the fence on one side behind the laurel hedge, and sometimes the flowers grow so lushly by the gate that I stop closing the gate. However, I have seen stray dogs in my yard very few times. The likelihood that another dog had pooped in the yard was very small.

I offered to show the renter where the poop was. She demurred. I went out and gardened some more, but she never came out and picked up the poop so I cleaned up the poop myself -- again. I stewed all night long, tossing and turning in bed, feeling it was time to give the renter a pink slip.

She had hedged rather than accept responsibility for her dog's poop, and she made no apparent effort to clean up the poop.

I would have felt much better if she had said, "Oh, I am so sorry" and had walked right outside, then and there an picked up the poop.

Dog poop is a safety issue. I don't want to clean it off my lawn mower blades or off my shoes or off my children's shoes. I don't want it accidentally stepped on and tracked into the house. Poop is 55% percent bacteria, and many poop bacteria species are perfectly capable of making us humans sick.

I thought about my trials with dog poop, and I thought of the Pope and the leadership of the Catholic Church and their handling of abuse within the setting of the Church.

Was what I wanted really so demanding? Pope Benedict appears to have done more sooner than other church leaders but the endless defenses of what he did and did not do are missing the point. When we Catholics complain that we have apologized and apologized and apologized and how much do we have to apologize, these complaints rewound both people who have been abused and the community at large.

What most people are longing for from Church leaders is for them to stop trying to defend themselves and minimize what they have done or point fingers at public school and other churches and say, "They did it too."

What we are longing for is for Church leaders to say, "We screwed up. We got it wrong, not just once but multiple times. Recent cases are still coming forward so we have more work to do -- more work to do stop abuses and more work to do to support the survivors."

And then we wanted visible, tangible proof that the work is being done now. We don't want consultants issuing compliance reports. We'd feel ever so much better if the evidence was in the parish bulletin and in meetings after Mass, if everyone knew

who was running poop patrol and how often they ran poop patrol. We want to see them running poop patrol, and we want there to be consequences if they miss scooping poop repeatedly..

That happy ending has yet to happen with the abuses in the Catholic Church.

Fortunately my trials with dog poop seem to have a better end.

I stewed all night long thinking about dog poop, thinking about what I'd do about the renter and her dog.

Fortunately, when I came downstairs this morning, the renter approached me and said, "I feel really bad about missing the dog poop in the yard. Why don't you charge me $10 every time you have to pick up my dog's poop. I owe you $30 so far."

That was all I needed. She took responsibility for her dog's poop, and she suggested a solution that sounded good to me, one where there was real incentive for her to change and compensation for me for cleaning up after her if she screwed up and missed some poop.

Maybe Catholic leadership should seek out a "would be" Buddhist nun for some advice on how to apologize and clean up their own @%%@!

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