Dear Brendan,
Thank you - I've never seen Pope Innocent's teaching translated into English!
It was copied in many Eastern Catholic prayerbooks to "justify" their use of the three-fingered Sign of the Cross.
However, I did find the Father's explanation of the "IC XC" somewhat confusing.
There are two schools of thought on this in the Byzantine tradition.
One is that the three fingers are used for crossing one's own person, but that clerics use the "Christogram" to bless others i.e. thumb, pinky and ring fingers united to express the Trinity with index finger joined by a slightly bent middle finger to express that the Son of God "Bent the heavens" and became Man (index finger).
Another version has the thumb criss-crossed with the ring finger.
The other school, the Old Ritualist one, maintains that the Christogram is to be used for making the Sign of the Cross on one's person and throughout.
At one point, Latin Christians, when they completed their Sign of the Cross, would bend down and trace a Cross on the floor which they would then kiss.;
This drove the Greeks "bananas" as they felt this contravened the canonical rules against placing or making Crosses on the ground over which people could walk disrespectfully. This actually constituted one of the "Errors of the Latins" that the Greeks catalogued.
However, the Western Rite Orthodox Synod of Milan has a "Stations of the Cross" in their prayerbook that actually prescribes this practice . . .
Ah, well . . .
Alex
