Peter Edwards: Despite the scandals, Churches continue to protect the weak and comfort the miserable

Right now people could be forgiven for thinking it is the worst of times. But they would be wrong. Sitting in evensong at a packed York Minster one Saturday recently, I wasn't convinced that Churches in the West were about to suffer the fate of a woebegone Dickens character: withering away, scorned and unloved.

Instead, there is a lot of good work being done that is just nowhere near as dramatic as the controversies, fights and failures at the top of the Anglican and Catholic Churches. Canterbury and Rome grab the headlines but it's not a tale of two cities; rather it's one of thousands of unheralded parishes.

It is these that mean Churches in Britain, hit by sex abuse scandals, falling congregations and a cash shortage, can recover – even if it takes some time. Clearly, the most shocking problem recently has been the Catholic Church's failure to tackle the evil of clerical child abuse. Pope Benedict XVI has been accused personally, and repeatedly, and few doubt there are more unsavoury allegations to come.

The Church of England has, typically, been somewhat quieter in its crises. The Archbishop of Canterbury managed to generate a storm by saying the Irish Catholic Church had lost all credibility because of its handling of child abuse cases. Predictably, this provoked outrage and, predictably, he apologised, but in a very roundabout way, Rowan Williams might have done his Catholic counterparts a small favour by saying the unsayable.

Several years hence, his undiplomatic intervention could be seen as contributing to the cleansing process through which the Roman Church must inevitably go. It certainly earned him a few grudging nods among Anglicans who, ever since the Vatican began to woo Anglicans upset by the ordination of women and gay priests, felt it was time for some plain-speaking.

Dr Williams has a few problems of his own to sort out, however.

Anglicans are divided over the treatment of gays and women in the church and while liberals, like me, suspect that deep down the Archbishop is one of their own, he does not want to be the man who breaks more than four centuries of tradition by presiding over a formal split in the Church of England. He has to find a solution, however, even if it is nothing more than an uneasy compromise between warring factions.

Meanwhile the good work of both Catholics and Anglicans, priests and parishioners, goes on largely ignored. In hospices, prisons and schools, they offer practical and spiritual help to the young, the old, the sick and the neglected. These activities are a core part of the Church in Britain and Ireland. They were there before the latest crises burst into life and will still be going long into the future, when you and I are just a handful of dust.

As Father Neil McNicholas, a Catholic priest in Whitby, wrote here last week: "'Catholic priest comforts grieving family' is not a common headline... How many marriages have priests helped to save? How many suicides have they helped prevent? How many alcoholics have they helped turn their lives around? Those things don't make headlines either."

So Christians are fighting an uphill battle for recognition. There are signs, however, that society is beginning to take more notice of Church leaders for positive reasons – and the proof of this is in Yorkshire. John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, was right to use Holy Week to urge the Church of England to use pubs to get its message across – however much it confused traditional worshippers.

We are all too familiar with studies showing Britons pay remarkably little attention to Easter. The latest of this type showed that more than half of six to 10-year-olds are unaware of its religious significance. So reaching out, as Dr Sentamu is trying to do, is vital. It's not just in the local hostelry, however, that new audiences can be found. It's also in the boardroom. That's why the diocese of Ripon and Leeds appointed the Rev Rob Hinton as its first minister to the business community. When I met him, he pointed out that simply yelling at bankers – much as it sounds good fun – will not make them change their ways, and that it is understanding which helps people live their lives differently.

It's an unfashionable view but he's right. Even more unorthodox, however, was the now infamous Nativity sermon from a York parish priest, which was dubbed "Thou shalt steal". Father Tim Jones' message – that stealing from large national chains could sometimes be justified for vulnerable people – rather got lost in the outrage that followed, which reached its height when a man threw a bucket of spaghetti and ravioli at him. But he had a point, even if he expressed it badly. Stealing is wrong, but if you are homeless, starving and cold it could be the seen as the least-worst option. Rather that than breaking into somebody's home.

So there is still some relevance to Christians. As well as preaching the Gospel and generating lurid newspaper stories, they also find time to protect the weak, comfort the miserable, stand up for the vilified and reform those who've gone off the rails.

Much of what they do can never match the ugly Church dramas being

played out on front pages or even in novels but, in Yorkshire and around Britain, it still makes a big difference. As Dickens also said, no-one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.