Hey Fan,
I think your point on the freedom to explore is critical to theologians' ability to do any real work.  For Christians, and Catholics, a good theologian might be somewhat analogous to what a cosmologist or advanced particle physicist is to science.  Like their counterparts, I see them as being able to take human knowledge or thought as far as it's ever gone, and then push the limit a little more.  It may take the rest of us a long time to catch up, but unless somebody is out there pushing the boundary, progress will not happen.   

Sadly, I think the efforts of previous Popes, ESPECIALLY Benedict, who should have known better, have had a disastrous impact on the very nature of theology.  Yes, the man wrote a lot.  But his squelching theologians, sitting on them, etc., may well have the same kind of impact as society telling Mr. Higgs that he had to stop thinking of particle physics, and adhere to the Bohr model of the atom...  The church needs better, much better.