Fr. Folsom on Liturgical Gestures

SACRED SIGNS AND ACTIVE PARTICIPATION AT MASS
What Do These Actions Mean, and Why Are They So Important?
Rev. Cassian Folsom, OSB

(via OSBNorcia)

He writes:

Note that Pope Innocent is describing what the custom was in the West. In the 13th century the East and the West still made the sign of the cross in the same way. The pope goes on to say: "Others, however, make the sign of the cross from the left to the right, because from misery (left) we must cross over to glory (right), just as Christ crossed over Paradise. [Some priests] do it this way so that they and the people will be signing themselves in the same way. You can easily verify this picture the priest facing the people for the blessing - when we make the sign of the cross over the people, it is from left to right..."

So the people, imitating the blessing of the priest, began to sign themselves from left to right. Be that as it may, centuries have gone by since then, and we in the West make the sign of the cross from left to right, with the palm open.

Here's an important liturgical principle: it is always difficult and often undesirable to jump back across the centuries to some ideal liturgical practice of the past. That's what Pius XII in Mediator Dei called "archeologism". You can't erase the intervening centuries. The principle rather is continuity with the tradition (mind you, I'm not saying a fossilized tradition, but a living tradition). So the Western way of making the sign of the cross is a valid development of the liturgical tradition.

Would it be a valid development to return to the older way of making the sign of the cross, even if it is abrupt? What about as a sign of unity with the East or with our past?