Two recent stories have set Colophon thinking about the difference between courage and cowardice.

Constable Peadar Heffron was grievously injured yesterday when a bomb exploded under his car on the Milltown Road, Belfast. The attack was both cowardly and vicious in the fullest sense of the word. The perpetrators (thought to be dissident republicans) exposed themselves to minimal risk, but the lives of their victim and their victim's young wife will be changed for ever by what they did. (At the time of writing, Mr Heffron's survival is by no means certain.) What Colophon chokes on is the fact that this act was carried out by people who, presumably, had at least a nominally Christian education, who grew up in a society in which both civil and religious law assert that the unjust taking of life is wrong. So, we have a cowardly act by cowardly people and the whole world is diminished by it.

Contrast that story with one from Portsmouth. Angela Mahon was being driven to hospital to give birth when the car she was in became stuck in the snow. As her contractions worsened, she knew she had no choice but to walk. Dressed only in her nightclothes, she walked the rest of the way, arriving at the hospital covered in snow and saying, "Help, I'm in labour." This story has a happy ending, with the birth of twin boys a few hours later; but the comments Angela made to "The Portsmouth News" are revealing: "I was so scared . . . I was really panicking. I think I was in shock. I just wanted to get there for the twins." I don't know whether Angela Mahon has any religious beliefs, but what she did was genuinely courageous and self-sacrificing. Real courage takes risks, and knows the risks it takes. It puts others first. Above all, it is life-giving whereas cowardice is death-dealing.

What can the Churches do to encourage a culture of life rather than a culture of death? The public pronouncements of our religious leaders are often thoughtful but can sometimes seem inept, out of touch or even crass, perhaps because the language used is, by and large, no longer a language the world understands or values. Having said that, I am reminded of Chesterton's remark that it is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting but that it has never been tried. Perhaps those of us who claim to be Christian need to try harder, to show by our actions that we really believe what we say we believe. It isn't easy to be brave, to stand up to hostility or derision or risk our own comfort or ease, but on the whole I think it preferable to causing others to weep because we have been cowards.