1) I can receive God everyday in Holy Communion.

2) I can confess my sins to a priest who as a human being understands first-hand my fallen human nature, and who as a human can reassure and guide me and who by God's authority absolves me of my sin and thus reconciles me to my God. Once again, this is a spiritual freebie (grace). What some people do instead is pay a psychologist a lot of money to tell them it's not their fault because they are just victims.

3) Prayer. Lots of it, in several forms. Verbal and meditative, solitary and community, special prayers like the Rosary. the litanies. I meet God in prayer. It is a mistake to skip it.

4) Hearing the Word of God daily in the readings at mass

5) Saints. The Church points me to many examples of men and women, ordinary humans who took a radical step, said the big "YES" to God, put him first, and followed him on an adventure right into the heart of His eternal love.

6) The pope and the magisterium. The Church is not a democracy. If it were, maybe a majority would vote for mass as entertainment, with dancers, stand-up comedians or music videos. If the Church were a democracy, birth control and abortion would be OK. marriage might be constituted as a two-year contract and the Sunday mass obligation would be dropped. Think I'm being absurd? Reread Exodus 32. GOD is I AM. He is big, really big. His will isn't determined by public poll. The Church has to be a stubborn guardian of what God has revealed, or where would we be?

7) Catholics (former and future) can always come home.

8) 2,000 years of continuity.

9) It's wildly unpopular. The truth always is.

10) The ritual, the silence, the (occasional) Latin, the candles, the bells, the vestments, the incense, the statues -- all things that powerfully remind me that we gather for something sacred, something other.