Pastor declares kneeling a sin

From an article with the same title by David Haldane of the LA Times:

At a small Catholic church south of Los Angeles, the pressing moral question comes to this: Does kneeling at the wrong time during worship make you a sinner? Kneeling "is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin," Father Martin Tran, pastor at St. Mary's by the Sea, in Huntington Beach, Calif., told his flock in a recent church bulletin. The Diocese of Orange backs Tran's anti-kneeling edict. While told by the pastor and the archdiocese to stand during certain parts of the liturgy, a third of the congregation still gets on its knees every Sunday. "Kneeling is an act of adoration," said Judith M. Clark, 68, one of at least 55 parishioners who have received letters from church leaders urging them to get off their knees or quit St. Mary's and the Diocese of Orange. "You almost automatically kneel because you're so used to it. Now the priest says we should stand, we … ignore him." The debate is being played out in at least a dozen U.S. parishes. Since at least the seventh century, Catholics have been kneeling following the Agnus Dei, the point during Mass when the priest holds up the chalice and consecrated bread and says, "Behold the lamb of God." But four years ago, the Vatican revised its instructions, allowing bishops to decide at some points in the Mass whether their flocks should get on their knees. The debate is part of the argument among Catholics between tradition and change. Traditionalists see it as the ultimate posture of submission to and adoration of God; modernists view kneeling as the vestige of a feudal past.

To kneel or not to kneel? Seems kind of silly. When church leaders typically see themselves as figures of authority to be obeyed and church members typically aren't willing to yield to authority in conflict with their own view, then I guess silliness like this is bound to ensue. Maybe church members need to learn submission and church leaders need to be examples of servants, not rigid authoritarians.