I was thinking about why perhaps the NO has introduced this new communal service for confessing sins.  Where, twice a year, many of the parishioners pack into the church to confess their sins none the less privately.  And, I cannot help thinking that it may be a mirror measure taken similar to the communal sacrilege for reception of holy communion.  Where, the "more the merrier" is the maxim.  For example, and I have seen it on video.  People will walk up to the NO communion priest with hands crossed over the chest meaning "I am not going to receive communion", and the priest shoves the wafer into the mouth of the person who looks upon receiving it surprised because they thought according to instructions such and such.  But, surprise, today you are eating bread with the rest of the bread eaters.  They went forward with hands crossed, but are forced to communion anyways.  As if, the NO doesn't care who receives it, and we would all agree that is largely the case.

And, this leads me to believe that they think sacrilege might not be so bad in terms of temporal consequences when done with more people.  So, with confession, which is a precept of the church, which they have to do, committing sacrilege with a bad confession will not be so harmful temporally if they do it with others at the same time.  So, they crowd all of the sacrilegious into the church at the same time to be all be sacrilegious together.  Do, you understand?   I think that is what is going on with these confession services.  This is why you do not see these liberals in the latin mass churches committing sacrilege.  They cannot spiritually be in communion with Jєωs or others who eat unleavened bread with their hands to fill their bellies.  And, they cannot be in physical communion/proximity to other liberals in the latin mass, because, liberals don't generally go to the latin mass.  This I suspect is their thinking, and they are applying it to these penitential services. 

Also, services like this don't negate the fact that contrition for sins must be present for valid confession.  So, if these parishioners wont confess their sins outside of a service like this, perhaps because they do not have firm purpose of amendment, then a service like this doesn't negate that requirement, and it does them no good.  And, they would know this, but if you have enough people doing it, that makes it right, right?  Wrong.  

The idea of a communal penance service is to gather a large number of people together with a as large as possible number of priests and afford them the opportunity to go to confession.
 

maria regina - stranger than fiction.  The fact that they cup their hands as a sign of not receiving is so strange.  It makes me think that the Byzantines did this to do the opposite of the protestants, who probably were doing the NO communion in the hand for a long time.    

Actually, the Byzantines have had this practice of begging the priest's blessing by cupping their hands for centuries, apparently way before the Protestant Reformation.  Likewise, Byzantines have had this centuries-old practice of crossing their chest with their arms when approaching the Altar for Holy Communion. Apparently, these Byzantine practices started with the Slavs, particularly the Russians because early Christians did receive Holy Communion in the hand. This was later stopped because of abuse and frequent accidents.

One of the benefits of crossing one's arms over one's chest and keeping them in place is to keep the faithful from making the Sign of the Cross either before or after receiving Holy Communion. Too many accidents have happened when communicants make the Sign of the Cross as such motions may upset the Holy Chalice.

Re:  the German "Catholic" pretzel
The pretzel, supposedly a German invention, is often considered "lenten" because the bread uses no dairy as was required during ancient times before the 1800s. Furthermore, the pretzel is shaped like a person approaching Holy Communion,  with arms crossed. During my college research, I read some of the diaries of Christopher Columbus, who was Catholic. He mentioned that the ships tried to observe the "black" lenten fast, so they took adequate provisions of biscuits, grains, fruits, and vegetables to enable the men to fast.

A common origin story of pretzels is that they were created by a monk around 610 in Italy. According to , the monk baked strips of dough that he folded into a shape resembling a child crossing its arms in prayer. He would give these treats, which he called “pretiolas” or “little rewards,” to children who had memorized their prayers. Unfortunately- and not surprisingly- there’s no docuмented evidence from the 600s to confirm this story. Other similar stories star a monk from France and bakers held hostage in Germany.

While any one of these stories might have some modicuм of merit, what we do know for certain is that the earliest recorded evidence of pretzels appeared in the crest of German bakers’ guilds in 1111. Later, in 1185, an illustration of pretzels appeared in the Hortus Delicarum. The manuscript was compiled by Herrad of Landsberg at an abbey in Alsace, then a region of Germany.  However, it’s very likely that pretzels existed long before either of these instances.

In a prayer book used by Catherine of Cleves in 1440, there was a picture of St. Bartholomew surrounded by pretzels. By this time, pretzels were considered a sign of good luck and spiritual wholeness—possibly due to the three holes in the common pretzel shape touted to represent the Holy Trinity at this point. The “good luck” connotation carried the pretzel to other holidays, including New Year’s Day, when in Germany children hung pretzels around their necks; pretzels hung on Christmas trees in Austria in the 16^th century; and parents hid little pretzels on Easter for children to find, an early version of an Easter egg hunt. In Switzerland, the pretzel shape was used as a marriage knot, and couples would each pull on a side of the pretzel on their wedding day. The larger half brought prosperity to the marriage—it was kind of like a doughy wishbone tradition.

Pretzels have long been integrated into the Christian faith. By the 16^th century, it had become tradition to eat pretzels on Good Friday in Germany, and Catholics once considered them the “official food of lent.” Earlier laws of the Church stated that only one meal a day was to be eaten during lent and the food couldn’t come from an animal. Yet another origin story says that pretzels were developed as a food for lent. Whether or not this is true, pretzels did become a popular staple during the holiday because it was easy to make and fulfilled the Church’s guidelines.

Pretzels made their way across the Atlantic with German immigrants who were later to be known as the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 1700s. ...

Early pretzels were of the “soft” variety; hard pretzels are something of a relatively modern invention. However, contrary to popular belief, hard pretzels did not originate in 1600 when a baker fell asleep while he was tending his fire, burning pretzels to a crisp, as good of a story as that might have been. In 1861, Julius Sturgis created the first commercial pretzel bakery in Lititz, Pennsylvania. It’s believed that his factory was the first to develop hard pretzels. These crunchy, salty snacks lasted longer in an air tight environment than soft pretzels did, allowing them to be sold in stores far away from the bakery and kept on shelves much longer.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/06/the-history-of-pretzels/

The idea of a communal penance service is to gather a large number of people together with a as large as possible number of priests and afford them the opportunity to go to confession.

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So then why not afford them the opportunity without the big showtime production aspect?
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Are the penitents showing up for a sacrament, or for something "extra?"
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What about a reconciliation service where the attendants are afforded a communal absolution?
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The Apostolic Penitentiary has compiled an Italian-language book devoted to Pope Francis’s teaching on the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the indulgences the Pontiff has granted.
Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the tribunal’s major penitentiary, and Msgr. Krzysztof Nykiel, the tribunal’s regent, wrote in the volume’s introduction that Pope Francis has sought to restore Confession to central place in the Church’s life and that the sacrament, rather than being a “torture chamber,” should be a “feast of forgiveness” where the sincerely repentant experience great happiness.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=34426