Since some comments and questions about my adolescent Catholics post seemed to think I was talking about *them* let me clarify one point: not all people who are struggling with the faith appear adolescent to me, let alone to be dissenters. When I use that term I use it very precisely, to include people who have stopped trying to conform their consciences to the Church and have instead started trying to conform the church to their consciences, and who do so rather more publicly than is comfortable for the rest of us. I have many many struggles and difficulties, but I stopped being a "dissenter" some years ago. Dissenters are people who form organziations with "Catholic" used falsely in the title, or who give interviews on street corners decrying theology they don't understand to reporters who know even less. Dissenters are people who think it funny to wear a "recovering Catholic" t-shirt at an awards ceremony or other prominent place. But people who struggle are simply the Church.