About twice a year I feel like I'm back on the set of the show "Politically Incorrect," sitting across the stage from the beautiful "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" (Jane Seymour) and the irreverent and sarcastic host Bill Maher, battling it out over the sins of the Catholic Church.

As a young adult Catholic who hangs out with mostly non-Catholics, I get several opportunities to defend my faith. Like the other day when I commuted to the nation's capital with a lapsed Catholic who has become a Unitarian Universalist-Scientologist. I explained why even with all of its ugly warts and moles I'm not trading in my conservative faith for a more politically correct, all-embracing, less rigid religion.

Here's a (very) rough paraphrase of our conversation (plus some added commentary I didn't think of at the time).

"I don't get it, Therese. You're an intelligent woman. Do you really believe all that stuff the Catholic Church feeds you?"

"Like what?"

"No birth control or premarital sex for starters."

"First of all, I don't see a few teachings of the church as being the essence of Catholicism, and especially not when you consider the 'conscience clause,' or paragraph 1776 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which reads: 'Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment.... For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.'"

"But all that negative guilt. I mean, who needs it?"

"I know I gripe a lot about Catholic guilt. But, to tell you the truth, I find some of it refreshing in today's secular and permissive culture. For me, personally, the guilt keeps me in check. It's like a safety valve on hot water. The knot in my stomach tells me that I'm about to do something stupid and will get burned. Granted, I have to learn how to shut it off occasionally, when the guilt isn't justified. But in general I think it helps me be a more decent person."

"But how can abstaining from something like red meat on Fridays be good for you, if you are depriving yourself of something you enjoy?"

"I guess I learned the value of abstinence when I stopped drinking alcohol," I responded, not bothering to tell him that Catholics haven't had to abstain from meat on Fridays with the exception of Good Friday since the mid-1960s, right after the Second Vatican Council.

"I suddenly had better reception to God, and I gained clarity in my thinking," I continued. "From that experience I can better understand and appreciate the wisdom of the desert fathers --- what they were trying to accomplish through asceticism."

"But what can you say about all the pedophiles? So many priests are so morally despicable."

"I can't deny that there are some really bad apples in our group. It's disheartening. But there are bad apples in every category of people. All I know are the priests in my life. And they are among the most spiritual people I know. I was really fortunate, I suppose, to be educated by so many inspiring religious people. That makes me not give up hope in the clergy, even as I read depressing headlines."

And with those words, we arrived at our destination.

Therese J. Borchard is a columnist with Catholic News Service.