If you want a picture of the CofE at its worst, that’s easier to find: just look at the headlines. In the space of one month, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was forced to resign over one case of abuse; his predecessor, George Carey, quit the priesthood over another; the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, faced demands to go over the same case. Hundreds more allegations are yet to be resolved.

Given the scale of public fury over abuse and cover-ups, you might expect the church to be solely focused on putting its house in order. Instead, Welby’s resignation was the cue for smouldering internal rows over other issues — gay inclusion, funding priorities, the future of the Anglican Communion — to ignite into bitter, open warfare. Even while it is coming under a barrage of external criticism, the church is busy ripping itself apart.

Why? A believer myself, I’ve spent weeks talking to my fellow faithful and to clergy at all levels, trying to find the answer. St Paul distilled Christianity down to three things: faith, hope and love. In my many discussions, I found plenty of the first, although little agreement about what it was placed in; not much of the second; and the third, well, it was in short supply.

I came away thinking that, for the CofE, this really might be the end of days. The first horseman of this coming apocalypse is the ugliest: the church’s hideous record of abuse.