About 24 hours from now my new book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Catholic Catechism (Alpha/Penguin), will be available online and in stores. Up until now I’ve been trying to temper my excitement with cautious pessimism, because that’s who I am, but a friend just emailed that amazon has shipped his copies, so I guess this book is for real after all.

What do you need to know about this book? It’s probably very different from what you’d expect of a catechism. It’s easy to read -- fun, in fact -- and yet it is completely faithful to the Church’s teachings and to the full Catechism of the Catholic Church, on which it is based. You are going to find lots of predictable things inside this book but even more surprising things.

I fell in love with the Church and my faith all over again during the writing of this book. Every prayer, every teaching felt new again after spending days, weeks, months sitting with the full Catechism of the Catholic Church and trying to figure out how to make that book more accessible to “regular” Catholics. My  prayer now is that my book will open up the beauty and poetry of Catholic teaching to those who wouldn’t otherwise undertake the larger catechism, which can be a bit intimidating to even the most stalwart student of Catholicism. Ideally, my book will be used as a study guide to the full catechism.

In case you’re wondering what qualifies me to write this book, I had a theological advisor reading every page to ensure its accuracy, and I’ve got an imprimatur to boot -- the first Idiot’s Guide to bear such a stamp. If you want to hear more about my experience with the catechism, read my latest Life Lines column by clicking HERE.

To buy my book on Amazon.com, click HERE.

And be sure to check my blog regularly by clicking HERE. Starting tomorrow I will be putting up frequent doses of catechism to give you a taste for what’s inside my book. See you there!