Becoming a Critical Lover of the Catholic Church

This week is Catholic Schools Week in the U.S., a time to reflect on the values and achievements of Catholic educational institutions.  On Monday, we posted an essay by Professor Anna Lannstrom of Stonehill College about “Creating Space for LGBTQ+ Students in Catholic Classrooms,” in which she described her approach to responding to students’ criticisms of organized religion.

Today’s post is by one of Professor Lannstrom’s former students,  Jessika Crockett-Murphy, graduated from Stonehill College where she entered the Catholic Churchm, and she is currently a graduate student in Ministry and Theology at Villanova University. 

“We hope that [young people] will learn that somebody like them can find a home in the church. And then we hope that they will make informed decisions about what religious path to travel, understanding what they are accepting and rejecting – and at what cost. 

“We say ‘at what cost’ because we worry that young people are rejecting religion because they have encountered only simplistic and hostile versions of it and because they haven’t understood it or the good it can do in their lives and in the world.”  

That passage is one of the conclusions that my co-author Professor Anna Lannstrom and I wrote in  the chapter “Opening the door: Making it possible for students to remain Catholic while staying true to themselves,” which was published  in Beneath the Rage and Tumult: Promoting Radical Hospitality and Belonging in College Classrooms, edited by Karen Eifler and Rachel Wheeler (Liturgical Press, 2025). 

In a post on this blog on Monday, Professor Lannstrom wrote about how she helps college students to better understand and reconsider religious affiliation.  Today’s post is my personal story, which was greatly affected by being a student in Professor Lannstrom’s class

For most of my life, I did not have any personal association with religion and got most of my understanding of it from the news or the internet. Even when I would see an article or post online, I wouldn’t explore it; instead, I would scroll away and take that news as gospel, a habit I think many others have fallen into with the ever-growing phenomenon of “doom-scrolling.” This habit caused me to hold onto several misinformed stereotypes and thoughts on religious individuals, especially Christians. As a young queer woman, I only saw hellfire-and-brimstone pastors condemning me to hell for the manner in which I loved people, because those leaders are what is deemed newsworthy. 

What I did not see was organizations like New Ways Ministry which work actively to create spaces for queer Catholics. Hatefulness dominates the media because it invokes emotions and reactions, whereas kindness and goodness are often left unrecognized as they are not monetizable.  This mixture of scrolling-based media, unwillingness to compromise, and hatred being deemed “newsworthy” left me not just disinterested in religion, but hateful toward it. I held those beliefs until I went to college. I was finally in a place that truly encouraged media literacy–the ability to think critically about news and social media posts–and exploration. 

During my undergraduate career, I went from a diehard atheist to a confirmed Catholic within three years. With the support of the amazing priests on campus, and inspiring educators (in particular, Anna Lannstrom)  I was able to see past the walls of judgement I had built and realized the amount of goodness that has come from and can continue to come from the Catholic Church and other religious organizations. 

It began with being willing to take risks: registering for classes completely outside my major, having office hours discussions  with professors, and deciding to study in the campus ministry building lobby. Each small step allowed me to interact with people I never would have before, and those connections showed me the reality that I had been missing. 

These new friends were kind, understanding, helpful, smart, and seemed a lot happier in life than I found myself to be. The common thread that connected them was some sort of engagement with religion, often Catholicism. Was religion really not all that terrible? Could good things and good people come from the Catholic Church? I had to keep digging.

My faith journey and eventual conversion to Catholicism was not an easy road to walk even with the trove of resources and supporters I had begun to collect. With research came information that helped solve many of my issues with Catholicism, but there were also times where my thoughts and feelings were reinforced, leaving me stuck between embracing the good and being certain that  my dislikes of the Church were valid. 

For instance, I had many friends and colleagues who spent hours discussing the church’s LGBTQ+teachings. Before confirmation, I had to come to the understanding that should I marry a woman in the future, my wedding could not be in a church. Wrestling with this issue, along with others such as the lack of a modern female diaconate, made me pause oftenn as my confirmation approached. However, in these moments I took time to look at the whole picture of the church. An organization that has lasted over 2000 years moves slowly,–andunderstandably so! It took a lot of faith to see how the Church HAD changed over time, such as on issues like  slavery, suicide, race, and others Maybe LGBTQ+ relations could be the next change? Maybe I could help be a part of the movements that bring about the change?  The overall good of the Catholic Church outweighed the bad, and I had faith not only in it, but in its potential to become better. 

Making this mind shift and major life decision was not easy, but it taught me a lesson that would later be re-cemented in my master’s degree program. In a class on Higher Education perspectives, I was introduced to the concept of “critical loving,” taught through the lens of bell hooks and others. Critical loving, as I understand it, is the concept of loving an organization, thing, or person, so deeply and so truly that you recognize its faults and weakness and actively work toward its betterment. 

Though I hadn’t realized it, this was what I had been doing over the past few years since coming into the Church. Ibelieve it is what so many young people need to do with religion, and other secular organizations or activities they may regard with suspicion. Being a critical lover allows one to recognize missteps or non-ideal beliefs, but not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead, you focus deeply on a) what you love about that thing; and b) what good has come from it that makes it worth your time and dedication. With these two focal points, you can then work to make the institution  better because your  passion and love of it drives you, while at the same time  the consciousness of its faults guides you. 

As with all things, this approach does not have to be applied to every institution or individual. If an organization or person is truly not doing good and does not align with your values, it is okay to step away. Critical loving is mainly for those things that have undeniably done good for the world or for the individual, and that have areas of growth within them that the person is willing to help facilitate. 

In my case, I saw the amount of good the Catholic Church has done over two millennia: thousands of hospitals, schools, shelters, social programs, chxarities– the list goes on. When I compared those achievements with the issues I had about church policy and practice, I found the good outweighed the bad in a measure that allowed me toenter and remain in the Church, and work towards making it better. Change comes from within–from individuals who see what the organization COULD BE and are willing to work towards that goal. 

My advice to other young people? Be a critical lover. Do your research. Discern and develop your values and find the good and bad of the things around you, and work towards making the world a better place. 

—Jessika Crockett-Murphy, January 29, 2026