This is probably normal. “Synchronizing with network” really means “downloading the block chain”, and it can take a few hours to a day.
Following the “catching up” you should see the number of blocks already downloaded. At the time of this writing there are 220,000 blocks, when it reaches that you are fully synchronized. If the number keeps increasing you’re probably on the right track.
You can speed it up a bit by forwarding port 8333 on your router (not very important, if you don’t know how you don’t need to bother).
