Theology is the possession of a Christian skill which can enhance life for the individual and the communion of which that person is a member. It has a vital role to play in a synodal church.

I have tried to look at this in various ways in previous articles; now I want to conclude these meditations by looking at how it can change the way we see ourselves and our discipleship.

Repetition

Repeat anything often enough and not only will people believe it - hence the constant repetition of adverts and why so much energy goes into 'building brands' - but, eventually, people will forget that there are completely different ways of thinking about a problem.

One of the duties of theology is to stop us in our tracks when those tracks have become ruts. It should get us to look afresh at reality, our place in it, and what it is all about.

Here I want to consider just two situations where this applies.

Situation 1: Living in a post-religious world; are people really not "religious"?

One of the most significant cultural developments of recent decades across the developed world is the number of people who reject any recognized form of religion, who say they do not believe in God or a god, or who ignore organized religion in their lives with the simple statement: "I'm not religious!"

Christians respond to this situation in a variety of ways.

One obvious reply is to try to "convert" them to accept the traditional language, vision and practices of Christianity.

After all, this is the basis of all missionary plans when missions were sent out in areas that had never heard of Christ and there they "won" many new people for the faith.

So why should they not view the society around them as "a new pagan land" and preach to such people?

While it is true that Christians must always proclaim Jesus as the Lord's Christ, addressing fellow citizens does not seem to have the same impact as missionaries had in parts of Africa in the last two centuries. Part of the reason for this is that the languages and practices of Christianity appear to many post-Christian societies as simply an appeal to go backwards.

This is a point that was made in a different way recently in La Croix by John Alonso Dick when he wrote about "changing the conversation" and quoted T.S. Elliot's poem "Little Gidding":

For last year's words belong to last year's language.
And next year's words await another voice.

Christianity - at least in its traditional language and practice - is explicitly that from which many are running away (and often for very good reasons), and they cannot abide the notion of returning.

Inviting people to "come home" to Christianity is equivalent to saying they should love the technology of the early twentieth century, outmoded social views such as the restrictions on women of the nineteenth century, or the religious clashes and bitterness of even earlier.

The situation is that they have tried Christianity and found it wanting.

Moreover, the history of clerical abuse has destroyed the credibility of the Catholic Church as a witness to anything noble in the eyes of many.

Clerical pomposity and attempts to influence public policy make Catholicism something that people reject with disgust.

It is so easy to imagine that this post-Christian situation is the equivalent to being a-religious, as so many claim. But this, for those who believe in God the creator, would be a great mistake.

Post-Christian does not equate to being without religious longings.

Are they godless?

But does that mean that they are godless, that the great questions do not trouble them, or that for this generation Augustine's claim that every heart is restless until it rests in God (Confessions 1,1,1,) is no longer true?

If it is true that they are truly godless, then it must be a case that now, for the first time in history, there are hearts and minds in which the Holy Spirit is no longer speaking.

To say they are godless is tantamount to saying that God has gone away.

But part of the good news of the creation is that God never goes away, and in every heart, his Spirit is somehow active.

It means that the quest for God is taking new forms, finding different expressions, and the challenge facing Christians is twofold.

First, for themselves to recognize these new expressions of God's presence in human life and work - and not assume that God only speaks in the older language with which they are familiar.

Second, to help their fellow citizens recognize for themselves these divine stirrings, the deep human need for the Infinite, and to forge with them a new language - a language and religious culture and practice - that belongs to today and tomorrow (rather than being that of yesterday spruced up for today).

This view of the situation of modern women and men was elegantly summed up in this way at the Second Vatican Council nearly sixty years ago:

For since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate destiny of all humanity is the same, namely divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers all of us the possibility, in a way known to God, of being made partners in the Paschal Mystery (Gaudium et spes 22.5).

But finding this new "language" is very difficult - it is even more difficult than learning a foreign language because we do not know its grammar - and then we have to translate our older "language" into it.

In this task of translating the Christian past into the human situation of today and tomorrow, theology plays a crucial role.

So every study of theology is intrinsically an act of mission - and no explicit missionary act can take place without theological reflection. Put bluntly; the more people say, "I'm not religious," the more those who profess faith need the skills of theology.

Situation 2: Making God in our own image - what are the limits of tolerance and mercy?

One of the depressing aspects of being a Christian is that whenever one hears of narrow-minded intolerance, one often finds that this intolerance is backed up by people who are loud in their professions of their Christian faith.

I met a gentleman recently who was not only homophobic but who also saw all contemporary tolerance of homosexuality as misguided and inviting divine wrath to come upon society for "putting up with it".

He summed up his basic view with this phrase: "It's against the law of God!"

And in the conversation, I could hear two other hidden assumptions: laws need a penalty if they are to have any bite; and just as human legal systems punish "accomplices", so God must punish those who "connive" with those who break his law.

Around the same time, Pope Francis was reported as "changing Church teaching" by saying that the death penalty was incompatible with Christian teaching.

In response, a news program interviewed a US-based Catholic who said that this was all part of the slippery slope of the "Church losing its way and going soft on sin". For this person, God was the final policeman and creation was a kind of police state with God watching everything and biding his time before releasing his vengeance.

When we see a crucifix, we might ask a theological question: do we think of God as power or as love?

As I watched that interview - and I have heard the same sentiments often over the years — I wondered just where the message of love fitted with this answer.

Perhaps love is not what it's about, but power? Certainly, both the man I met and the other I heard on TV would have seen divine power as more "real" than divine love.

But while we can argue about whether or not "the bible" is for or against homosexuality, or whether or not the death penalty is needed and permitted, in both cases such arguments are only addressing the presenting level of the problem.

I suspect that there is a deeper problem. We think about the world around us, we have views on "justice", law and order, and the role of power in human relationships. And then we build a god in our own image, a god who ought to work as we would work ourselves (if only we had a chance).

Here is a basic question each of us as Christians must answer: is the fundamental aspect of God towards the creation one of power or love?

This is one of the hardest questions in all of theology.

It is also where the whole three thousand-year history of our theology intersects with one's personal outlook on life.

If we think of God as love, we might better appreciate the prayer for homosexual couples recently published by some Dutch bishops, and why a Jesuit theologian, Jos Moons, called having such a prayer "actually quite Catholic".

Faber's answer

The nineteenth-century hymn writer Frederick Faber (1814-63) proposed this very different vision to that of God-as-power, which seems to come to the very heart of the issue:

There is a wideness in God's mercy
like the wideness of the sea.
There's a kindness in God's justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth's sorrows
are more felt than up in heaven.
There's no place where earth's failings
have such kindly judgment given.

For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind.
And the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we would gladly trust God's Word,
and our lives reflect thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

What a wonderful piece of theology, though — alas — it is a hymn we hardly ever sing!

God's love is broader than the measures of our human minds, and so we must be wary of ever presenting anything but mercy and gentleness lest we betray the God we claim to serve.

But this level of mercifulness is not just a human trait nor a psychological or social disposition: it is the very challenge of discipleship. Such a level of forgiveness and tolerance, the level the world needs if there is to be peace, can be seen on reflection to be itself a gift, a grace, and so something for which we must be eucharistic.

In formal theological jargon what those two men who wanted a god of vengeance had done was to assume that justice was a univocal concept in the human and divine spheres, and so drew god down to their own level.

What Faber did was to say that if you can imagine the widest reality you can - for him it was the sea and for us is might be the light-years that separate the galaxies - then that is less than the "wideness" of God's affection for us.

Theology is not a body of ideas, nor the ability to provide the exegesis of doctrine, nor knock-down arguments to those who challenge Christian beliefs.

It is an invitation to imagine beyond our imaginations' bounds. I have responded to those too-human-bound images of the divine with a piece of poetry because theology is, in the final analysis, more like poetry than prose.

Theology and theologies

Theology is not just about knowing "what you are about".

It's more a matter of having the skills to think about what you know and do, to clarify what is obscure and confused, and to then help others in their quest.

God's infinity, Deus semper maior, is most truly recognized in God's mercy; but appreciating the range of that mercy and seeing what response it calls forth from human beings is a most complex challenge - and skill in theology is one great facilitator in this task.

In these five articles on the study of theology as a help towards a synodal Church, I have worked outward in a series of circles:

• religious questions that concern me as an individual;
• religious questions that concern me as a member of the Catholic Church;
• religious questions that concern the Catholic Church in relation to other Christians;
• religious questions that concern Christians in relation to other religions;
• religious questions that concern 'religious people' - those who believe in the Transcendent with other human beings.
• religious questions that concern every human being - though many would not see themselves as asking religious questions.

We all inhabit each of these circles simultaneously because each of us is the centre of a world whose outer reaches (and they might be just next door or even among our closest friends) interact with the whole of humanity.

Being a believer in this world - exploring my own doubts and questions, working with other Catholics and other Christians, encountering others every day of every religion and none - calls on us to think through our choices, what it means to follow Jesus's Way of Life and to reject the Way of Death, and to bear witness to hope and love.

This vocation is neither easy nor straightforward.

We both follow a well-mapped route which our sisters and brothers have travelled before us, and have to explore new routes and carve out new paths.

On this journey, being well-skilled in theology is like having a compass as well as a map.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Here I want to give a more concrete form to the argument by looking at a basic problem of Christian theology and a current problem in Catholic practice.

We all ask theological questions and we cannot avoid them! Sometimes we realize this and we carry on the questioning with skill and a cupboard full of resources, sometimes we do it badly, with a limited range of ideas, and make a mess of it.

The poor cook has only a handful of recipes, relies on tins of sardines, and cannot cook a piece of meat without burning it; the good one has enough training and built-in resourcefulness that with the same ingredients we get an interesting meal!

So it is with the study of theology: the same questions that lead the untrained person to throw it all up and say that the world is mad and a mess, can, with some theological training, be seen to refer to basic human issues and it can be seen that there are ways out of our problems. Discourse can then replace discord, and enlightenment can take the place of bigotry and ignorance.

I want to develop this by looking at a couple of situations where there is "a commonsense answer" and another, more theologically informed answer. Then I will leave it up to you to choose.

Situation 1: Living as an individual disciple: What is 'God'?

Everyone I meet appears to know what the word G-O-D means. For a great many people I meet the answer is simple: there is no god - it is an illusion and the universe does not need a god and there is no evidence in human life for god: just look at suffering!

For others, there is a god and there are ways of describing god. There are "Acts of God", which are always nasty like fires or floods or earthquakes. There's also "the Man Upstairs" and it's a good idea to "keep in with him".

This Man Upstairs is very much like a lord of the manor whom you do not really like, indeed resent, but you know that you have to be "nice" to him, as you do not want the consequences of making him angry.

I know other people who cannot utter a sentence without mentioning god and god seems to be the actual motive force of everything - except for some reason he keeps hiding.

So it is "Thank God for a lovely day" - but what about the storms that kill people? Or "God is above us all" - so no need to worry! - So why bother doing anything? Or "do not be sad, God loves us" - but I am sad and I want to shout out in anger as the agony of death, decay and destruction I see around me.

By contrast, most other words need very careful definition. I have to learn how to use language precisely and if I were a car mechanic and referred to a "rocker arm" as a "yoke" you would probably (wisely) not trust me to service your vehicle.

Much of education is trying to explain how to use language so that it illuminates rather than obscures. But "god" is such a simple a word and we all seem to know all about it.

The atheist knows there is no god, while some religious people know more about god than they do about the physics of their refrigerator.

So why have theologians asserted over and over again: we do not know what we mean by the word G-O-D and that the whole task of theology is to ask the real question (it is not a learning game): what is God?

Late medieval attempt to picture in statues the whole mystery of God - Father, Son, and Spirit - in human images. While such a desire to see God may answer both a human and a catechetical demand, it not only fails, but betrays the deeper reality that the Divine is greater than all we can imagine.

Could it be that we confuse the question "what is god?" with the question "how many gods are there?"

To the latter question the atheist will answer that there is no god. The official answer of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and members of many other religions will be there is one god.

Others, including those who refer to the Man Upstairs and who thinks of God as the super-boss among a class of bosses, will say there is more than one god.

By contrast, "what is God?" is an attempt to put words on mystery. It is a mystery that is glimpsed here and there for a moment, felt intensely and then felt as absent, a vision which is more akin to poetry than to prose, a sense rather than a cold-blooded deduction from evidence.

"What is God?" is a question that is the pursuit of a lifetime and, while we may pray and worship and work, we must always resist the falsehood of thinking we have an answer.

If you think you have captured God in a sentence or a single idea or "have it worked out", then that is your projection, your idol, rather than the Reality which is beyond the universe but which beckons us.

It takes a lot of training in theology to appreciate this fundamental maxim: Deus semper maior - "whatever G-O-D is, is always greater than what we think God is".

An early modern attempt to imagine that which is beyond imagination. Mystery cannot be fitted within the categories of our empirical experience, nor depicted in this material way.

So let us use the G-O-D with reverence and be sensitive to how we can be spreading confusion by overuse.

Situation 2: Living in a community of Catholic disciples: Are we short of presbyters?

Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Catholic Church today knows that there are not enough priests to staff the parishes; that communities are losing their churches due to this shortage because the remaining priests are usually greying and often exhausted through trying to cover too much territory.

And while priests from Africa and India may bring welcome help, this is far from ideal: they are needed in their own cultures and often have difficulty adjusting to a western European religious environment.

The answer to the priest shortage is so obvious to many people as to need no reflection: ordain married men, abolish compulsory celibacy, or even consider ordaining women - as other Churches have done.

But as soon as these possibilities are suggested a series of counter-arguments, usually designated as "from tradition", are advanced so as to make any change appear impossible or so far in the future as to be beyond any visible horizon.

Faced with this impasse, most arguments seem to revert to the history of practices: could what happened in the past, tell us something about the future?

But once we turn to the past we find that cases are put forward from each side as to what happened or did not happen, the significance of Jesus doing or not doing something, whether or not "apostles" equal "bishops" and whether or not those around Jesus were "ordained" or simply picked - or maybe there is no difference?

Then, even when answers to these questions emerge, another problem pops up: can the Church do something that appears never to have been done before? Or if something has always been done in one way can it now be done in another way?

So faced with a crisis in the present and the future, we seem to pore over the details of the 16th century (Trent's rejection of those who challenged the notion of celibacy as a more perfect form of discipleship) or the 12th century (first imposition by the Western Church of celibacy as a pre-requisite of ordination), or even (to the dismay of biblical scholars) the exact details of Jesus' meal on the night before his crucifixion (asking, for example, were women present).

Can theology throw light on this question?

A sign in a German town - when the sign was made there were three celebrations of the Eucharist each weekend, not there is just one. This change is not the result of a major demographic shift in the area, but doe to the fact of ever fewer presbyters. The model of the presbyterate still demanded by Roman Catholic Church practice no longer fits the pastoral reality of this local church. The sign is an analogue of the absurdity of theory confronting reality and reality being found wanting.

The first point to note is the style of the argument: it looks backwards to the past while imagining the past as a (1) complete, (2) clear and (3) adequate statement of all that we need to know about the structure of the Church.

The past, it seems, sets the parameters of discussion and contains the precedents for what can and cannot happen now.

So we might start by noting that the notion that ever closer scrutiny of the past (as containing the answers to any possible question now or in the future) is very similar to the way as some in the Reformed churches relate to "the bible" as having within it a clear answer to every possible question.

So asking whether the "tradition allows" women to be priests is like asking whether "the bible allows slavery or capital punishment". The assumption is that there is an answer in the book and if it countenances the practice, then it is allowed, while if it criticizes it, then it is forbidden.

But the bible has no criticism of slavery or capital punishment and does not condemn those who would stone a woman who committed adultery. Likewise, until the later 19th century the tradition had little problem with slavery.

I knew a priest who had been a prison chaplain and was with many men before they were hanged. He could not understand why people now thought it immoral. I have also met Christians from cultures where stoning women still occurs - and they say they can "understand" the practice!

But asking these questions of the past misses a more basic fact of life: cultures change and sometimes their insights amount to an enrichment of human life and sometimes to its diminution.

But a culture's past is as different from its present as that culture is from a foreign culture, and the future will be different again.

So maybe we need to refine our questions. Perhaps we should ask what can we do now that would help us pursue the goal of building the kingdom of God, affirming the dignity of each person, recognizing the presence of the Spirit in every one of the baptized.

We thus shift the focus from where we have come from (because we are no longer there) to where we are going (because that is where we soon will be).

This question allows us to assess what we value and value what we possess. It asks what it means to say "thy will be done" today.

We are only asking these questions - about celibacy, the form of ministry, and about who can be ordained - because we are no longer in the older situation. So we look forward and know that we may make mistakes - we have made many in the past.

But if we focus on purpose and what we are called to become, we will at least be honest. And, moreover, we will break out of the circle of endless details about what some verse in some first-century text means or what happened in the fourth or fifth centuries.

These questions may be great historical questions (and, as such, respond to our needs as history-producing beings), but they are not questions about what is demanded of us on the path of discipleship moving into the future.

Clearer questions

One thing that the study of theology should do is to help us clarify our questioning.

The past - and all its texts such as those that are in the bible - is our memory, an important key to our identity, and one of the deep common bonds between us.

But the past is not "the universal religious encyclopedia" in which are all the answers just waiting for one of us to go and "look them up".

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

I have argued that it can foster a more conscious discipleship and help us see new ways through our difficulties.

But can it bring us, with the Holy Spirit's help, light for our path?

Theology is not a download

Theology is not just a body of information that one downloads.

In the past it was often confused with "the information needed by a priest" or some set of codes that could be used to explain everything, as if "theology" were the religious equivalent of basic geometry.

Theology does involve knowledge about how Christians live, how they worship, how they have presented their faith in doctrine, about how they read the texts they cherish, and what it is that makes them the community of followers of Jesus.

But most of this is already known to some degree to most Christians who take their discipleship seriously.

So what is special about theology? It is having a developed, trained skill in thinking about the Christian life, reflecting on what we are doing, why we are doing it this way, and asking if the great purposes of God could be better served by acting differently.

Let's see this by looking at an old problem and some fresh answers.

Living with other Christians: Can we share a table?

Meet any group of Christians and the likelihood is that there will be individuals from more than one tradition: a few Catholics, a few Anglicans, maybe a Methodist or Baptist, and one or two others.

All claim to be followers of Jesus, all pray to the Father, all acknowledge the Spirit within them. All have been baptized and have set out of the Way of Life which makes them fellow disciples.

So far, so good - and we rejoice that we no longer call each other nasty names (or worse) and appreciate that God, and the divine love and mercy, is unlimited.

But then, someone notes that the community of disciples never becomes more visible than when we gather in the Christ to share the meal of the Christian blessing and thanking the Father; when we break and eat the common loaf and drink from the common cup.

This sharing of the loaf and cup, the Eucharist, is the center and summit of the whole Christian life - and we echo St. Paul when we say, "Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor 10:17).

The Eucharist has - too often and for too many - been an experience of exclusion and rejection. The sign pinned over this church door in Sterzing / Vipiteno (Italy) reads: "Here Jesus invites sinners and welcomes them to his table."

We are a divided body

But we are also divided: we worship apart, we have different structures and customs, and we have different ways of expressing belief and different ways of explaining what we do believe (and a history of saying that anyone who is "not with us" is both wrong and needs corrective punishment).

So many Churches have rules which say that "if you are not completely united with us, you cannot share the Christian meal with us". This causes bitterness, hurt, rejection.

It has also caused untold suffering when, for example, two Christians from different Churches marry and cannot share that which both may proclaim as most precious to them.

Faced with this problem it seems the only answer is to argue that the Eucharist is a manifestation of the union the Church in Christ (which it is), so if you are not in visible union with the Church it would be wrong to participate in that visible manifestation.

This logic is tight, and has been proclaimed by bishop after bishop, canonist after canonist, and so it would seem that it is as much a fact as "caution: hot surface" written on many machines. The rejection of "intercommunion" is hard, even sad, but there is nothing that can be done!

But one amazing difference between theology and engineering is that while the latter uses language factually - the bridge can either bear the weight or not -, theology uses language analogically.

It is aware that language is an approximation and that what appears a clear answer from one string of reasoning, emerges as a faulty answer from a different starting point, and both strings of argument can be true.

The pope in 2015

When Pope Francis visited a Lutheran church in Rome in November 2015, the wife of a Roman Catholic expressed her sorrow that they were "not being able to partake together in the Lord's Supper".

"What more can we do to reach communion on this point?" she asked the pope. His reply was very interesting. Here's what he said.

Thank you, Ma'am. Regarding the question on sharing the Lord's Supper. … I think the Lord gave us [the answer] when he gave us this command: "Do this in memory of me".

And when we share in, remember and emulate the Lord's Supper, we do the same thing that the Lord Jesus did. And the Lord's Supper will be, the final banquet will there be in the New Jerusalem, but this will be the last.

Instead on the journey, I wonder - and I don't know how to answer, but I am making your question my own - I ask myself: "Is sharing the Lord's Supper the end of a journey or is it the viaticum for walking together? I leave the question to the theologians, to those who understand.

It is true that in a certain sense sharing is saying that there are no differences between us, that we have the same doctrine - I underline the word, a difficult word to understand - but I ask myself: don't we have the same Baptism? And if we have the same Baptism, we have to walk together.

You are a witness to an even more profound journey because it is a conjugal journey, truly a family journey, of human love and of shared faith. We have the same Baptism. When you feel you are a sinner - I too feel I am quite a sinner- when your husband feels he is a sinner, you go before the Lord and ask forgiveness; your husband does the same and goes to the priest and requests absolution. They are ways of keeping Baptism alive.

When you pray together, that Baptism grows, it becomes strong; when you teach your children who Jesus is, why Jesus came, what Jesus did, you do the same, whether in Lutheran or Catholic terms, but it is the same. The question: and the Supper?

There are questions to which only if one is honest with oneself and with the few theological "lights" that I have, one must respond the same, you see.

"This is my Body, this is my Blood", said the Lord, "do this in memory of me", and this is a viaticum which helps us to journey. … … … I respond to your question only with a question: how can I participate with my husband, so that the Lord's Supper may accompany me on my path? It is a problem to which each person must respond.

A pastor friend of mine said to me: "We believe that the Lord is present there. He is present. You believe that the Lord is present. So what is the difference?" — "Well, there are explanations, interpretations...".

Life is greater than explanations and interpretations. Always refer to Baptism: "One faith, one baptism, one Lord", as Paul tells us, and take the outcome from there.

I would never dare give permission to do this because I do not have the authority. One Baptism, one Lord, one faith. Speak with the Lord and go forward. I do not dare say more.

Francis notes that theology is not a matter of fixed answers. Instead, there is always a variety of explanations and interpretations, and it is the task of theology to find those answers which are most conducive to discipleship.

Another way of viewing the situation

So what would such an argument look like? We have one Lord, and this is the faith we share. At baptism each of us was joined, not only to the Christ, but to one another as forming the children of the Father.

This is the kernel, the basis, and cornerstone of our identity - and this is not limited to any one Church but is the basis of "the Church". All who are in this great host of witnesses to God's love are on the journey of faith and are sustained on this often difficult path by each other and "the food for the journey".

This is an expression of God's love, mercy and care. And if it is God's mercy, are we not overstepping the mark to limit it?

A Lutheran church in Morschen, Germany. Can our common re-birth in the baptismal fond lead to our sharing sustenance at the Lord's table?

Theology is a process in the midst of life

Theology is not only more than "an encyclopedia"; it is a creative process by which we seek out what is the way of faith amid an often-dark forest of clashing ideas.

It helps us to recall that because "God is always greater", and we have to watch out for a bad habit of making God appear to be as narrow such as we have a tendency to become with our "possessions".

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

A door to a synodal Church

But if voices are to witness to the truth, the speakers must seek to be as informed as they can be.

In matters relating to faith, an essential part of that personal equipment is to be theologically literate. Viewed in this light, we can see the study of theology as a doorway to a synodal Church.

But there are three obstacles to such widespread literacy.

First, among Roman Catholics, "theology" was historically confined to the ordained. Many Catholics have simply never thought that taking a serious interest in theology is any of their business.

The old attitude of the "the clergy speak, the laity listen" is still alive as we reach the 60th anniversary of the opening of Vatican Council II (1962-65).

Second, there has been a marked swing away from the teaching of theology in many universities.

The emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ("STEM Subjects") means that theology is excluded as somehow useless, a confessional matter, or as a poor use of resources.

Third, many highly committed Catholics - both lay and clerical - have never considered how the formal study of theology can be a resource for the Church and the world.

While individual academic subjects strive to say everything about something, theology strives to say something about everything.

Therefore, what follows is the case for getting more and more Catholics to take up theological studies as an aspect of the synodal path we have no upon.

Discipleship

Words have a sparkle as well as a meaning.

For many Christians today the word "discipleship" - a notion that has a very wide range of meanings - has a very positive sparkle.

It captures a sense of personal commitment, of life as a movement of growth and learning, and seems to fit very well with a sense of belonging within a Church that imagines itself as the pilgrim people of God.

"Theology", by contrast, has little sparkle; indeed, it seems a dull word relating to a rather boring and obscure academic pursuit.

When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers' (Ps 8:3): the wonder of the universe - which we today see in greater detail than ever before - has always been a starting point for theological questioning.

But let us look at a series of situations - scenes that confront us as Catholic Christians every day - and see if looking at them with the resources of theological speculation can help us to do three things.

First, theology can help to reposition these problems so that they might be seen as opportunities rather than roadblocks.

Second, theology can help us to relate to them differently as individual disciples and as a community of disciples, the Church, and thus find ways "through" the problems.

Third, theology can provide us with alternative ways of talking about what we hold precious as disciples and so help us in the task of evangelization.

What is theology?

What exactly do we mean by theology?

Most Christians think of theology primarily as an academic subject. It's a body of information that exists "out there", something that's difficult to get one's head around and must be absorbed by religious experts. And, so, it is really the business of the clergy.

It is like the religious equivalent of physics. Physics is complex and seems to be awfully important. So we are glad that there are egghead off in some university somewhere who work on it, but we can get on with life quite well without it!

Just so with theologians. No doubt they are useful, but just as the egg still boils whether or not you understand the physics, so faith keeps going and God is still "above us all" whether or not you have read a theology book!

But, actually, theology is not really like physics. It is far more like cookery: the more you know about cookery, the easier everyday cooking - and cooking is not only unique to human but affects us every day - becomes.

'Wisdom is calling out in the streets and marketplaces' (Prov 1:20): wherever humans come together, there are latent theological questions. Theological questions are as close as the local weekly market.

This might seem a little bit arrogant but think of the number of times either religious questions or questions with a religious dimension come up in everyday conversation.

A person is knocked down on the road and someone says: "If your number's up, your number's up!" Do you accept that life is so determined? Even if you do - and there have been many deterministic religions - don't you still look both ways before crossing the road?

One athlete on winning a race bows to the ground and thanks Allah; another blesses herself; a third does nothing because he thinks that is superstition. Are there different gods or if just one God, why so many arguments. Or is it all hocus pocus?

As I write this I recall the bomb thrown into a church in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday a couple of years ago, another bomb that exploded in Kabul in a dispute between Sunni and Shia, and the tensions in the United States that arise from some of the apocalyptic ideas held by members of the fundamentalist "Christian" right who deny climate change and imagine they can predict the future by stringing together a few biblical texts.

All three stories set me thinking. Perhaps religion is bad for human beings. Should it perhaps be consigned to the dustbin of failed stupidities? That is a basic theological question.

'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these' (Mt 6:28-9): the beauty of the world around us is another starting point for theological reflection.

Religion produces discord but could it also be the sponsor of discourse between groups since societies always develop religions, even if today they are usually god-less religions. That too is a theological question.

Discord or discourse
All religions argue about what their "original" texts/stories or founders meant/ said/wanted.

Are there better ways of looking at these questions that might generate more light than heat, and are there ways of pursuing these questions that are creative rather than destructive?

Once again, we have theological questions.

If we are encountering these questions, then as a community we might seek to address them in a careful, considerate manner - and we have a noble goal: replacing discord with discourse.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.