Successive post-missionary ecclesiastical regimes in the diocese have continued to emphasise the importance of sustaining a clear break between what is categorised as Christianity and non-Christian practice, a situation mirrored by clergy in other post-mission contexts in Africa and Asia (Mosse 1996; Stirrat 1992; Bond 1987; Wijsen 1993). The result, at least in Ulanga's Catholic communities, has been a perpetuation of practices that the Church defines as non-Christian outside the boundaries of the Church. This separation between church defined Christianity and apparently ‘un-Christian’ practice is not manifested in a separation between Christians and non Christians, but in the lives and practice of people who, while they define themselves as Christian, continue to perform what is classified by the Church as ‘un-Christian’. The majority of such practice concerns the relations between predecessors and descendants and is glossed in some contexts as belonging to the category of tradition or custom (kimila/jadi) (Green 1994).

Practice defined as ‘traditional’ is not unchanging (cf. Boyer 1990). It can incorporate change as long as change is initiated on the authority of the dead and the spirits associated with the specific territories in which Pogoro people reside, facilitating the inclusion of distinctly Christian elements into contemporary strategies for maintaining relationships with ancestors. Masses for the dead have come to be regarded by some families as equivalents to offerings of beer and food to remember the dead.