President Barack Obama is not, repeat not, the messiah, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput told an audience in Canada this week, warning that some Catholics seem to worship Obama with a “spirit of adulation bordering on servility.” The Rocky Mountain News and news agencies and blogs around the world quote Chaput as saying that a democracy is meant to elect “public servants, not messiahs.”

Obama, Chaput said, was given a mandate in the election to fix the economy, not to “retool American culture on the issues of marriage and the family, sexuality, bioethics, religion in public life and abortion.”

Chaput could not be reached. His entire address can be found at the Catholic Culture blog. But before you left-wingers roll your eyes, it’s not just the religious right that’s worried about Obama’s star power. Last year, Jonathan Stein wrote of Obama’s “messiah complex” for the progressive Mother Jones.

On the other hand, check out the blog Is Barack Obama the Messiah? It provides indications that the president may, just may, be the messiah after all.