She insists she feels broadly hopeful about the role of her five parishes, but optimism in this context calls for a determination to look on the bright side.
Rev Canon Jim Mynors, vicar of six rural parishes (two of them Grade I-listed) in Northamptonshire, similarly says it is a mixed picture.
Why did bishops, who were not monsters and who presumably believed themselves to be exemplars of goodness, choose to send child rapists out into parishes rather than bring the institution into disrepute?
And yes they see families in their parishes, and yes they have brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews who raise children, but it is down there in the doing of it that our ideas are formed and our strategies worked out.
Parishes were empowered to take out 20-year government loans to build garden cemeteries around the outskirts of London – or rent space in existing suburban grounds.
He also selected ten Roman parishes the homeless were known to frequent and built showers there.
Ministers in a same-sex marriage could soon be working in Scottish parishes after the ruling body for the Church of Scotland took the first step in approving their appointment.
Mackinnon recommended immediate action: the prohibition of urban burial, with legislation requiring parishes (or unions of parishes, as under the Poor Law) to build their own large cemeteries at a safe distance from the centre of the metropolis.
"In some of the parishes, there are only a few families left and most of the faithful are elderly," Parolin said.
One suggestion is that struggling parishes are turned into "festival churches" – meaning, the parish ceases to have a regular vicar and the church building is effectively closed, to be opened for services at the major church festivals during the year.
He also called on Catholic schools and parishes to ban gay-marriage supporters from speaking at their events.
