"... I do not think it means... what you think it means... "

What a lot of noise about that word...

As it happens, I hold a Degree, the sort colloquially known as "Master of Science". The principal degree requirement for a Master of Science is demonstrated mastery. Of Something. If you like, I wrote a Masterpiece of a Thesis... I'm not particularly proud of it as a Piece of Writing, but I can still tell you what's going on in every part of it, and it definitely all makes sense, while being not-obvious-from-the-get-go. And that was ten years ago.

That's what Mastery is about.

The Latin name for the same degree, from which the English "Master of Science" descends, is Magister Scientis. That's right. I can genuinely speak Magisterially about a small but significant and sometimes-useful bit of Mathematics, and in rather more depth than Baccalaureates are expected to. And it's not because I discovered anything, nor still less invented anything, but because I have mastered it. Got it under my dura, as it were. It was before I was; it now does my bidding (more or less) because I have been conformed to it, and know not to bid it what it will not Do.

Indeed, there is only One Who speaks Magisterially and Creatively in the same pneuma. The Church speaks with Magistras when and because and in how She is Conformed to Him Who Is Ante Ipsa. Her Epi-skopoi speak with Magistras, similarly, when they have mastered Her theology and been conformed to it. Whenever it is Not Her Theology that is spoken, it is not She who is speaking; and whoever speaks opposed to Her teaching has been mastered by Something Else, by something Alien.

I wonder to what extent "Magistras" has taken on the colour of Maiestas in the Public Mind (and elsewhere). They both have that Latinate flavour of Bookishness, haven't they? Not to mention differing only in three letters... easy to confuse? And be not in doubt: the Servus Servorum, and his Antistiti, indeed have maiestas, for instance in authority to discern penitence and so Forgive or Retain; and the SrvsSvrm has maiestas also to order the Episkopoi, defining their Parochia and such; Ligatum/Solutum erit et in Cœlis, remember! However!!! Magistras on the contrary is not about mastery of subjects but of mastery over self in deference to the Truth. (Materialists, btw, will tell you that "the truth" is "what is", whatever else those might be; we can do better: Truth is Who Is).

I don't care who is dropping "Magisterial" into what periodicals over or under what articles: the Magistras (or lack thereof) of anything is, at least in principal, a Falsifiable Proposition, because the Magisterium is a Public Tradition. Our Lord Himself answers those who conspire against him: "I have spoken openly to the world. I have always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, whither all the Jews resort: and in secret I have spoken nothing."

So There.