Let me apologize if you thought I was being rude. I have nothing but respect for someone who honestly acheives a doctarl degreein anything. The effort to advance human knowledge -- which was once the defininig threshold of a doctoral degree -- strikes me as the summum bonum of intellectual activity. My remark about bajo playing is a bit tongue in cheek. And WYZ has pointed out some very real aspects of individual help that such a degree coiuld conceivably enable, which is the ground of realapplication I was looking for.
This said, I believe that the knowledge of the workings of the individual spirit and its tribulations and efforts in life, is mis-named if it is called "theology", which means, by definition, the knowedge of (a) god. Nevertheless, the usage is so well-entrenched in practice that minor protests such as mine are likely to be pissing into the wind, so consider the question withdrawn.