This week, with MARTYN HALSALL, communications officer for the Church of England in Lancashire

WERE you aware of another sound, threatening to drown out the marching of the anti-war protesters, last weekend? Could it have been the collective sniggering of a nation entranced by the revelations of long-ago love between Edwina Currie, former minister for bad eggs, and that greyest of premiers, John Major?

Everyone loves gossip, but it costs. It sours memory and hinders forgiveness. People of faith acknowledge its destructive attractions.

But people of faith need also to be people of reality; to discern the value of the rumour. The deepening moral morass in which the former Conservative government found itself sinking raised wider issues of public trust and accountability, which coloured public perception.

The Christian scriptures show Jesus eager to offer God's forgiveness to those wishing to make a fresh start, but censorious towards those trying to whitewash their immorality.

He faced down the accusers of a woman caught sleeping around and caused a theological storm by turning her death sentence into a free pardon. The gospel story suggests he read between the lines and found in the moral attitude of the mob more to condemn than in the trembling woman they threatened to stone.

Perhaps the curried revelations of last weekend deny larger questions. Besides the tittering and the reaching for our own stones, were we also aware of a smoke screen being drawn over the protest marchers, to mask the devastating effects on whole countries and communities which war against Iraq would bring?