Reviewed by Fr. Paul Robinson

Legend has it that, in a conversation with a seminarian in 1977, Archbishop Lefebvre remarked that the best book on the New Mass was the one written by Da Silveira. Given the excellence of the work, the story is quite believable. The author’s research is deep, his arguments are compelling, and his judgments are reasoned and measured.

This book includes Da Silveira’s original text on the New Mass, first published in 1970, which considers whether the New Mass, in its original form and in its instruction, is good or bad (chapters 1-6). It also includes a work published in 2016 and then revised in 2018, the year of Da Silveira’s death, on whether a Pope can be heretical and, if so, whether he falls automatically from his office (chapters 7-18).

Da Silveira’s devastating presentation of the problems with the New Mass was so feared by Pope Paul VI that he forbade the publication of the work in 1973, seven years after he had abolished the Index. Da Silveira begins his critique with an analysis of the General Instruction that accompanied the new missal of 1969. Briefly, the Instruction represents a Protestant notion of the Mass. It leaves out mention of transubstantiation, the Real Presence, sacrifice and the propitiatory nature of the Mass; it puts the priest on the level of the faithful and makes the Mass just as much a memorial of the Resurrection and the Ascension as of Calvary. A Spanish commentary on the Instruction that appeared at the same time as the missal confirms one’s worst fears on the Protestant theology that the New Mass represents.

Chapter 2 addresses the objection that the suspect passages of the Instruction should be interpreted in light of its clearly orthodox passages. Da Silveira sagely notes that this can be done when suspect passages are rare and seemingly accidental to the text, but not when they are common and form a system of thought that runs throughout the text, as is the case with the Instruction.

The book reads like a detailed Ottaviani Intervention in chapter 3, as it delves into the Latin version of the New Mass and finds there a striking departure from the Catholic theology on the Mass. The next chapter considers the changes that were made to the Instruction (not the Mass!) in 1970 in response to the outcry made against it, and finds that the new version keeps the errors but makes them more dangerous in being more subtle. Da Silveira’s analysis of the New Mass concludes in chapter 5 with astonishing evidence that the New Mass is but a re-baked Lutheran liturgy.

Chapter 6 addresses what, in my mind, is the gravest objection to the SSPX’s position that the New Mass is bad: is it not true that universal disciplinary laws are infallible and that the Church could not promulgate a liturgy that would be harmful to souls? Da Silveira points out that, while theologians have traditionally held that disciplinary laws are infallible, they have yet always qualified their opinion with limiting clauses. As such, circumstances can indicate that they are not so. In the case of the New Mass, it was clear that Pope Paul VI did not want to engage the charism of infallibility by the fact that he stated: “the rite and the respective rubrics are not by themselves a dogmatic definition; they are susceptible of theological qualification of varying value, according to the liturgical context to which they refer” (p. 150). Meanwhile, the fact that Paul VI on occasion expressed his will that the New Mass be obligatory does not mean that it is infallible.

The following twelve chapters of the book, 7-18, treat the question of a heretical pope. This has to be the clearest presentation of this topic that I have seen to date. Da Silveira summarizes St. Robert Bellarmine’s presentation of five different possible opinions on the question. Then, he considers which opinions theologians in the history of the Church have chosen as their own. Da Silveira himself leans towards the fifth opinion, that a heretical Pope automatically loses office once his heresy becomes manifest. This does not mean that Da Silveira is a sedevacantist. On the contrary, as he clarifies on p. 230, the heresy is not manifest as long as the vast body of the Church continues to accept the Pope. There needs to be some procedure against the Pope by which he is rebuked for his heresy and he persists in it for the heresy to be manifest.

The book concludes with a summary of Da Silveira’s position on the New Mass: it is bad and it is not infallible. Because so much effort has been expended in the previous pages to make clear distinctions, to anticipate objections, and to argue on the basis of solid research, the conclusion is compelling.