By: Jim Taylor

           Our cat Lucky has ascended to the top of the social totem pole in our house.
          Several years ago, Lucky ran across the road in front of my car. I hit her. Then I felt responsible for her. So after she recovered from her injuries, I brought her home.
          For most of her life with us, Lucky lived at the bottom of the pecking order, subordinate to two older cats and a large but inoffensive dog. She made friends with the dog; they sat at the head of the stairs, a Mutt-and-Jeff combination, to welcome us home. But she kept a wary distance from the two dominant cats.
          Now all three of the other animals have succumbed to old age and illness. Lucky is queen of the castle.
          And she has learned that she can wrap us around her little dew-claw.
          She sits by the door and bleats. We leap up to let her out. Or in.
          She has learned that if she stands on the paper tray for my computer printer, I will instantly pick her up and park her in my lap.
          If I take a nap in the afternoon, she climbs onto my hip and kneads me with her claws until I pay attention.
          She has become less humble, more demanding - especially at meal times.
          Lucky illustrates, in her own small way, Lord Acton's oft-quoted dictum: "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
          Lord Acton wrote that aphorism line in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, in 1887. The quotation rarely includes his corollary: "Great men are almost always bad men."
          Lucky was more lovable as a tiny grey waif, sneaking into our laps while the older cats napped complacently by the fire.
          Special status tends to do that. Politicians who seemed sympatico with the masses become autocrats in power. Crusaders for accountability and transparency start treating the public purse as their own. Social activists join the establishment. Religious celebrities consider themselves exempt from their own preaching.
          I recognize enough of the symptoms in myself that I try - not always successfully - to avoid chairing committees or heading organizations. I'm more useful, I think, moving slightly outside the circles of power.
          It makes me wonder what might have happened if Jesus, instead of being executed as a criminal, had survived to lead a growing world-wide church. Would he have been able to resist the lure of power, the heady effect of riding the top of a hierarchical pyramid?
          Would life in the penthouse suite have changed him?
          The late Jack Lakavich lamented, after a visit to some overseas churches, "Why do all organizations become more patriarchal as they age?"
          So often, institutions launched in idealism settle into internal power struggles. And fade into a fog of navel-gazing or rigid policies.
          There's a truth in the evangelical mantra - we do need to be born again. Not just once, though, but constantly. To prevent us from assuming that a privileged position is a right.

If you have comments or questions about Jim's column, write to him directly at jimt@quixotic.ca