Not allowing laymen to handle the Blessed Sacrament is no "obscure rule", but it's been the immemorial long-standing Tradition of the Church. Obviously, the Church realizes that there are certain grave situations which would permit exceptions to the rule, such as if a church were on fire, to prevent sacrilege (say, if hoodlums break in to the church), in danger of death, etc. But there must be PROPORTIONATE NEED to do so, and it cannot become the norm and the ordinary mode of behavior, since it destroys faith in the sacredness of what the Blessed Sacrament is, and we see the fruits of this in the Novus Ordo, where the vast majority no longer believe in the Real Presence. The less of a real need there is (laziness of NO presiders doesn't count), the less justification there is for it.
Just think about how sever God was with prohibiting anyone but the priests from touching the Ark of the Covenant. Even when they only touched the Ark in order to save it from tipping over, God struck them dead. That should be food for thought, o "formerly too scrupulous" OP.
We should have the attitude of fear and trembling before God, and that requires only consecrated vessels and consecrated hands to touch the Blessed Sacrament ... again, unless there's some proportionately grave reason to make an exception. Communion in the Hand is yet another deliberate Novus Ordo program to de-sacralize everything that Catholics once held to be sacred, and thereby to destroy and undermine faith, and to derogate from the reverence we owe to God.