I don't think the gesture has anything at all to do with nazism in the Catholic Church - or in your church, Mary. I do think that it is a silly gesture however.

Blessing, my foot! Blessing is given by the priest as the representative of Christ, not by the community. In the Catholic and Orthodox Chrches that's the whole point for having a priest (that he represents Christ), not just as a prayer-leader - unlike may Protestant Churches.

Gestures like that are a sign of the slow descent (over a number of decades, perhaps as much as 100 years) towards things physical/material and away from the spiritual emphasis that both Catholic and Orthodox covet; where a gesture is required to express religious feeling, like an external sign of what you feel. So that others can judge you by it, perhaps? It ends up with old grannies trying to out-genuflect each other, or the churchgoers imitating some sort of ecstatic state - in the hope of achieving it, I wonder?

So it's not the (unlikely) nazi links that annoy me in this case. It's the fact that there is a gesture in the first place, and that the power of blessing is being watered down by such newfangled theatrics.

I do feel better now;-)