Q: Thank you for sharing your calm, reasonable, thoughtful approach to liturgy.   I was taught as a priest to make the sign of the cross when giving a blessing with thumb and all four fingers together, palm facing the people, person, or object being blessed.   I notice other hand positions.    One has the hand turned with thumb and fingers together, the pinky finger facing whom or what is being blessed.    And a third has a finger and thumb touching so that three fingers are together and extended as sign of the cross in blessing is offered.   
I really ask out of curiosity, aware that this is far from a key topic in Catholic liturgy.   I also ask because I do not want to simply assume what I was taught has some normative status.

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A: At the end of the Mass, when the priest gives the blessing, he places his left hand on his breast, raises his right hand, and makes the sign of the cross over the people while saying the words of the blessing (GIRM 167). The missal says nothing more about his fingers.

However, the Ceremonial of Bishops offers a footnote citing a passage from the 1962 missal: “If he blesses others or some object, he points the little finger at the person or thing to be blessed and in blessing extends the whole right hand with all the fingers joined and fully extended” (CB 108, note 81).

Although the missal does not give the same instruction to priests, and bishops receive it only in a footnote, I think best practice would be for us to follow this 1962 rubric that the postconciliar rubrics explicitly retained.

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