I just saw this quote on a very Catholic blog.

It was written during a period of Catholic triumphalism and for many it would epitomise the Catholic church at it's bombastic worst. . .to me, however, it rings remarkably true. I suppose he encapsulates the reason I decided to rejoin.

"There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church… She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s." 

 Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1840

I looked this man up on wiki and discover that he was an historian (books still available). He is buried in Westminster Abbey and was not  himself Catholic.  I'm pleased about this. 
He says it is "a work of human policy" but I would say that the reason the church survives is exactly because it isnt.