My favorite study Bible to recommend is the Life Application Study Bible from Tyndale House Publishers. Good notes and resources, definitely worth it.

Just look at the last verse of the Old Testament. The very last thought that God leaves His special people with for 400 years was this:

Hosea 9:11
As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird, from the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception.

For once, I actually agree with Jim Lincoln about something (his post below about Catholic Christians)...or you could just go straight the Bible to answer John Y’s mindset of Catholicism and Christianity:

1 Corinthians 10:21  Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake,because they know not him that sent me.

If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin.