Dissent and Conscience

Two points/questions in response to Steve's most recent posting.  First, if Fr. McCormick S.J. means that "dissent" is a necessary condition of a healthy tradition, then I think he's just dead wrong.  A community actively engaged in asking and answering questions over time, allowing the cumulative and progressive entrance of knowledge, is a healthy tradition.  One can register and pursue a question about the received learning without "dissenting" from it, no?  Second, whatever one's judgment as to what the Second Vatican Council taught on the question of "subjective conscience," the subjectively innocent but objectively wrong conscience lands its owner in a dangerous position.  God may reward the person possessed of a subjectively innocent (but objectively mistaken) conscience (a thesis Jack Coons and I explored in our By Nature Equal book), but still that person is in trouble:  She is, in fact, cut off from the truth until her conscience becomes correct, and, meanwhile, pursuing the objectively erroneous course may cause ontic harm.