l±0 BOOK REVIEWSA Church Self-Reliant and Missionary : Apostolic and Patristic Models forAfrica By A. Mavenka. Gwelo, Mambo Press, Occasional Paper, Missio-PastorafSeries No. 9, 1978, 120pp., ZR$l,10.This essay by Fr Mavenka, a Catholic secular priest of the Gwelo Diocese,was originally presented as a minor dissertation in partial fulfilment for thelicentiate degree in Theology at Maynooth, Ireland in 1975. The work takesas its starting point the Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church ofVatican II, and in particular its direction that the episcopal conferences'pursue this programme of adaptation with one mind and with a commonself-reliant Churches.plan' with the aim of transforming dependent missions into independent,The basis of the essay is in a nineteenth-century Protestant, three-folddefinition of self-reliant as self-leading, self-supporting, and self-propagating.Self-reliance has radical social implications for the Church, involving a drasticlowering of standards in its economic life 'because a rich Church cannotwitness to poor people'.Through a careful and scholarly documentary examination of localchurches in the New Testament and Patristic periods the writer concludesthat the early Church did not organize foreign missions but founded theChurch directly in the different places which it evangelized, 'building it upin each place with local elements: Bishops, clergy and laity. It accepted apopular liturgy and used the arts which flourished on the spot.'The proper aim of evangelism is thus not to found missions but toestablish Churches with a mission.The shortage of priests in Third World countries stands in the way ofthe implementation of these radical changes, and a much greater emphasismust be placed on the providing for the needs of the Church from localresources rather than on an over-dependence on outside help.Protestant churches may, without ordination, specially commission lay-men to dispense the sacraments in particular circumstances and for limitedperiods. This solution is presumably unacceptable to Roman Catholics becauseof their view of priesthood and sacrament. Fr Mavenka sees the solution ofthe problem in 'the diversification of the priesthood', i.e. in conferringordination to the priesthood on those lay-leaders who are in many placesperforming those functions which are traditionally reserved to the ordainedminister.This reviewer suggests that, following the recent report of the RomanCatholic Commission for Priestly Functions (The Daily Telegraph, 15 August1979), a partial solution to the problem may be found in fuller and permanentuse of deacons, who hitherto have been regarded as occupying a step towardsthe priesthood. The report notes that permanent Roman Catholic deaconshave already been ordained, some of them married men. A policy such asthis might go a long way towards the realization of the true objectives soably expounded by Fr Mavenka in his essay.University of Rhodesia R. CRAIG