OK from what I can see from investigstions when parents is set to 0 then the test
$parents = !empty($parents) ? explode(',', $parents) : array($modx->resource->get('id'));
is setting the parents variable to the current calling resource id.
I test this by adding the following just after this line
return implode("\n", $parents);
and then trying the call
[[getResources? &parents=`0` &depth=`99` &includeContent=`1` &tpl=`rss_feed` ]]
on a couple of different pages and it always returns the calling resources id.
when I specify a parent other than 0 then it returns the ID specified in the call
so I tried changing the !empty to
isset and all works fine.