Boo Hoo

The priest bears his irrevocable identity as sacrificial priest, as alter Christus, with him into eternity. He is already a sacramental sign.

What's a mere honorific title in comparison to that?

Boo hoo.

A friend told me of how when a priest we both know received the title Monsignor, she congratulated him, and the priest growled and snapped, "It just means more work!"

By which he meant the bureaucratic type of busybody work.

There are perhaps priests who pant after this type of bureaucratic type of busybody work. This would relieve them of a greater portion of their ordinary duties as priest.

Maybe when dioceses are no longer run like businesses then the bishops will no longer have a heap of bureaucratic busybody work to divvy out to other priests, by which divvying out process the title Monsignor is conferred, and by which process bureaucratic busybody work is mutually reinforced.

In which case the title Monsignor would cease by default.

Priests are not there for us to lavish with gifts and donations and honorific titles.

People should pray for priests, starting with their particular local parish priest.

Sure, give gifts and donations to your priests - or priests you have never met - but your gift isn't much good if you don't pray for the priest.

Your calling him Monsignor means precisely jack if you don't pray for him.

Just as honorific titles mean precisely jack without the performance of ordinary duties performed extraordinarily well.

Ordinary duties never cease.

It is in the "ordinary" that we are sanctified and that we help to sanctify others.