After opening to overflow audiences in South America, the biggest blockbuster of 2015 is about to hit the USA—and no, it has nothing to do with superheroes battling a psychopathic robot. This event, which will be coming to only three American cities, promises to be even bigger than the Grateful Dead’s “Fare Thee Well” concerts, or Neil Young’s return to Bethel Woods.

I am referring, of course, to the coming papal visit in September.

Pope Francis—the first Pope from the Americas, and the first from the Global South—has become a bona fide rockstar not just in the eyes of many Catholics, but also for many progressives, who have previously regarded the Catholic Church with disdain because of its doctrines on issues of sexual morality and gender roles. His celebrity is due in large part to his renewed emphasis on Catholic social teaching, with its calls for economic justice and its “preferential option for the poor.” While opposing Marxism as such, and distancing himself from the “liberation theology” school of thought, Pope Francis has nonetheless articulated a clear and unambiguous critique of capitalism that has certain folks squirming in their pews.

Among these are the people I call “Mammonists.” That’s “Mammon” meaning “money,” as in the famous statement by Yeshua ben Yusef, “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” Mammonists try to get God—and believers—to serve Mammon, rather than the other way around.

The Mammonists have worked quite diligently over the years to shelter economic activity from too much moral or religious scrutiny. Milton Friedman’s dictum, “The only social responsibility of a corporation is to maximize profit for its shareholders,” is a pretty succinct summation of the Mammonist point of view. At the same time, they have also done their best to convince us that capitalism is the most Christian way to run things, and that any attempt to reform it must inevitably lead to “Godless Communism,” gulags and all. (The beginnings of this effort, by the way, are well-documented in the recent book “One Nation under God: How Corporate America Created Christian America,” by Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse.)

They’ve had a quite a time of it over the last generation or so. Whether by tacit agreement or actual conspiratorial plotting between moneyed interests and the leaders of the churches, somehow the attention of the faithful (not just Catholics, but mainstream and evangelical Protestants as well) has been kept riveted almost exclusively on hot-button issues like abortion and gay rights, while economic and environmental injustices have been allowed to increase unchecked, without much comment or critique from the Church.

Francis has upset that convenient—and lucrative—arrangement. He has not abandoned, modified, or contradicted Church doctrine on the sexual issues, mind you, but in pointing out how monomaniacal and unbalanced the Church’s approach had become, he has awakened a sleeping giant—or more properly, aroused the giant’s conscience.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a backlash, and we can expect it to get louder and shriller as the time of his visit approaches. But I don’t think it will have much effect.

After all, when you’re right, you’re right.