Progressive columnist for The Washington Post Harold Meyerson believes conservatives despise Pope Francis because he is the embodiment of Jesus Christ and feel threatened by the pontiff's anti-capitalistic views.

"The pope addresses Congress Thursday, and conservatives are fearing the worst," Meyerson begins. "Their belief systems can tolerate a lot — laissez-faire economics, xenophobia — but Pope Francis’s emphasis on the Roman Catholic Church’s historic antipathy to capitalism has them in a dither."

In his column, Meyerson imagines Francis speaking before Congress and repeating Christ's teaching to his disciples in Matthew 19, where Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Surely, Meyerson concludes, Republican members would rise quickly to their feet and shout him down saying, "You lie!"

But economics aside, Meyerson also accuses conservatives, particularly those that are Catholic, of loathing the pope's departure from "the church's traditional fear and loathing of women and sex." He writes: "By returning to the kind of issues that St. Francis [the pope's namesake] and the Nazarene focused on — stewardship of the Earth, championing of the have-nots — Francis has been a great disappointment to those Catholics nostalgic for the spirit, if not the letter, of the Inquisition."

Through to his final paragraph, Meyerson didn't miss a chance to fill the mouths of conservatives with his own interpretation of what they believe:

A pope infused by the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi and Jesus poses a threat to the current economic order. Conservatives are right to fear and despise him, as they would be right to fear and despise his role models. The final scene of George Bernard Shaw’s play “Saint Joan” places Joan of Arc in a dream sequence in which all her persecutors, once she’s safely dead and canonized, praise her and acknowledge her sainthood. When she asks them if she should return to Earth and live again, however, they answer with fear, loathing and a resounding “no.” That, in essence, is the conservatives’ response to Pope Francis, and to the spirit and faith he embodies.