The salon crowd among Catholic GOP theocons has been in a pretend snit for weeks about the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. One can only imagine what comes next. Thrown volumes of Chesterton or, worse, lapel pins?

Catholic GOP blogger’s like Deal Hudson are calling for the paper’s editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, to resign or be fired. George Weigel has written at least twice on the subject. Michael Novak is nearly apoplectic with apparent outrage. What’s this all about? The Vatican paper, the partisans claim, is tilting toward Obama—which is baloney.

Here’s Novak’s lead, under the headline All the Confusion Fit to Print…

For several weeks now, L’Osservatore Romano has published glowing, star-struck, teenage praise of Pres. Barack Obama, while blithely ignoring what its praise means in the American context. It fails to grasp the full threat Obama poses for the American Catholic conscience. Several leading American bishops are distraught, and have asked for help: L’Osservatore Romano must learn of the immense scandal it is causing in America.

Weigel’s broadside begins with a theocon boast of GOP insider access…

Moreover, several officials at very high levels -- men I can say with confidence are not in conversation with E. J. Dionne, Amy Sullivan, or Obama administration fronts like Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good -- spoke to me last fall of their deep appreciation for the Bush administration's positions on the life issues, AIDS prevention in Africa, AIDS and malaria relief, and religious freedom. Indeed, one very senior official told me that, at his level, it was understood that no American administration of the immediate future was likely to be as supportive of Holy See positions as the Bush administration had been -- and this, despite the obvious and serious disagreement over the administration's 2003 decision to enforce the resolutions of the United Nations and depose Saddam Hussein by force.

And then concludes…

It would, of course, be helpful if the newspaper published by the Holy See did not display a sorry ignorance of recent American history (including the history of the civil-rights movement) and a fideist credulity about the magic of Barack Obama. To assume that the pope and his most senior advisers have drunk the Obama Kool-Aid and wish the American bishops would chill out is, however, another story altogether, and not a very credible one -- no matter what foolishness finds its way into the pages of L'Osservatore Romano.

And, under a headline calling for a new editor for the Vatican paper, Deal Hudson writes this…

If L'Osservatore Romano continues to treat Obama and his administration this way, the Catholic supporters of Obama will believe themselves completely vindicated, and understandably so. I can only imagine how a good number of our bishops are feeling about OR and Giovanni Maria Vian this morning. It is possible, of course, that Vian is simply misinformed. If so, that can be corrected, and Vian can begin publishing accurate information and commentary on the new administration. If not, the Vatican newspaper definitely needs new leadership.

What these savvy spin-meisters are up to is the classic ploy of working the press. Their “outrage” is about as authentic as American pastrami. In fact, it is tremendously reassuring to faithful Catholics to know, contrary to Weigel’s boastful claim to the contrary, that L’Osservatore Romano has never drunk the GOP theocon Kool-Aid. The Church Universal needs media analysis that transcends the religio-politico partisanship that now roils the Church in America. Surely even Weigel, Novak, and Hudson recognize the inherent need for the media arm of the Holy See to be independent of American politics.

Rocco Palma’s always superb Whispers in the Loggia reports this morning’s edition of L’Osservatore includes a carefully crafted assertion of the paper’s independence from American politics.

"Obviously," the translation goes, "the Holy See and L'Osservatore Romano have been, are and will be fully on the side of the American bishops in their task of advocating the inviolability of human life at whatever stage of its existence." Eschewing the theocons’ arguments that the paper is skewing toward the Democrats, the article disagrees saying such “interpretations are unfounded," the note added, "not least those which have sought to instrumentalize the journal's articles to make the teaching of the US episcopate on the inherent evil of abortion appear as an exercise in sectarian politics in contrast to a different strategy of the Holy See.” It continues, noting that "President Obama has shown himself open to dialogue and the US bishops have positively greeted this possibility. But in doing so they've confirmed, and rightly so, that in dialogue, compromise is never possible on the fundamental questions of the right to life."

Amen.