But when the media began reporting that worshippers were required to embrace their fellow pew sitters before Communion, uniformity was the last thing on many Catholics' minds. Order me to hug a stranger? More like grounds for GIRM warfare.
As it turned out, the hugging instructions came not from Rome but from the Diocese of Cleveland, Ohio. The Rev. J-Glenn Murray, S.J., director of the diocese's liturgy office, apparently decided to use the new GIRM rules as a springboard for an overhaul of Mass gestures in Cleveland-area churches.
Murray decided, for example, that worshippers should pray the Our Father before Communion with their hands raised upward and apart--a posture known as the Orans that some Catholics already use, but which is far from universal. Then there were the infamous hugs, couched as an instruction that people "embrace" those near them instead of shaking hands, the usual gesture in a pre-Communion ritual popularly known as the Kiss of Peace. The most controversial of all of Murray's directives was an instruction that those receiving Communion not kneel down in prayer right afterwards, as most do now, but instead remain standing and singing in their pews.
See the article Mass Confusion at http://www.beliefnet.com/story/135/story_13535_1.html
P.S. This is not a defense of Pilla or his GIRM tampering.