Hi, Hank —

The Church has lots of material and mechanisms!

If you are a young person, you can purchase a copy of YouCat, Youth Catechism on Amazon; they are pretty cheap, and whether you are a teenager or grown adult, you can learn a lot.

It stands for Youth Catechism; it's the Vatican's way of trying to be cool with the youth, after all, we now know that Homer Simpson is Catholic : -) Here are some other ways the Pope and the Vatican is trying to keep in touch with the Youth:

• His web site: Vatican web site
• His News site: Vatican News site
• His Face book page: Pope Benedict XVI on Face book
• His YouTube site: Vatican News on YouTube
• His Pope2You site that has an iPhone App.
• Aleteia - Seekers of the Truth
  

If you're a seeking Protestant, no matter what age and don't know where to start. This may help.

• The (CCC) Catechism of the Catholic Church, Soft Cover.
  pages: 920
  dimensions: 9" x 6" x 2" depth
  
  
• Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church **Question and Answer format **
  pages: 200
  questions and answers: 600
  dimensions: 9" x 6" x 1" depth
  
  
• YouCat, Youth Catechism ** Question and Answer format **
  pages 301
  527 questions and answers with cross references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Holy Scriptures.
  dimensions: 8" x 5" x .75" depth
  slightly smaller print
  

There are forums and knowledge bases like:

• Ours! From this page, you can:
  • Ask a question
  • Read the most recent postings
  • Read the Frequently Asked Questions, or
  • Search for an answer that may have already been answered.
    (To date we have answered over 5,952 questions.)
    
• Our Mass and Adoration pages go into depth in explaining what the Mass is and how it historically developed.
  It also has links at the end of some pages for future references.
  
• Our Family pages help Catholics deal with every day issues they run into:
  • Marriage Prep/Marriage
  • Home schooling
  • Single Catholics
  • Catholic Christian Women
  • Same Sex Attraction Ministries
  • Politically Catholic and more
    
• Our Church pages have links to:
  • Vatican web sites
  • Where do I write?
  • and a Vatican II web page
    
• Our Resources pages have catechetical and apologetic references for the faithful
  to improve on their faith including a page for the Early Church Fathers, Basics for
  non-Christians and a Books and Periodicals page of recommended reading from the team.
  
  Want to have fun learning try Who Wants to be a Catholic. (from our home page)
  
  
• Our What's New pages have mini-sub apostolates under the Features page,
  that I run along with a Favorites page and Catholic humor, Catholic Convert, and theological opinion pages like Mike's Theology Corner.  Other theological opinion pages can be found under the Resources page.
  
  
  
• Our colleagues on the West Coast at Catholic Answers: Catholic.com
  
  Their forum is a little different than ours but can be found here:
  
  • Catholic Answers Forums
    
  • Catholic Answer Live! Radio
    
  • Catholic Answers Magazine. and their Podcasts:
    
  • Catholic Answers Podcasts
    
    
• There are other very fine Catholic apologists who have written fine books on the faith including:
  • Scott Hahn
  • Jimmy Akin
  • Patrick Madrid, and
  • others
    Note: you can find some great resources at: St. Joseph's Communication
    
    
• EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network has:
  • a document library (Search)
  • an audio library (Search), and
  • their Search page.

If someone is interested in Catholic history try this site:

• New Advent It has the entire 1917 Old Catholic Encyclopedia, indexed by an alphabetic list at the top of the home page.

If someone is interested in Catholic Apologetics try these resources:

(CAR) Catholic Apologetic Resources to defend your Catholic faith:

Our goal at AskACatholic is to supply our fellow Catholic or potential Catholic visitors with the needed resources to be a more knowledgeable, practicing Catholic who will enjoy being faithful to the Church.

I'm sure if my colleagues have any other ideas they will reply.

Hope this helps,

Mike