title: application.rb defined methods not being found?
body: <p>I'm working on a project where I've inherited some legacy code from an old version of Rails (1 or 2, I think). After tinkering with it, I tried starting it up, but I'm running into trouble in one of my controllers. Specifically, the line <code>@user = current_user || User.new</code>is stating that current_user can't be found. After doing some digging, I see that <code>def current_user</code> is hanging out in my application.rb file. Why isn't the app loading this method?</p>
  
  <p>Am I misunderstanding how application.rb is supposed to work?</p>
  
  <p>(If it matters, this method seems to be protected, but I don't know how that would prevent the app from seeing this definition.)</p>