What’s wrong with being fair?

For roughly twenty years, every time I’ve gotten up to request that a mi-sh’berach prayer be said for a relative or friend, I’ve mentioned the sick person’s mother’s name, in accordance with tradition, and then added the father’s name. It seems only fair—if I add the Mothers to the Amidah, how can I omit fathers from other prayers? In twenty years, three previous rabbis—two of them graduates of the Jewish Theological Seminary—never objected to my personal minhag/custom, nor did even the most traditional members of our synagogue. But last Shabbat, out of a clear blue sky, our rabbi, who’s been with us for almost exactly a year, sprang it on me that this is forbidden by Jewish law. All of a sudden, something that I’ve been doing for twenty years has to be discussed by the Ritual Committee? That’s what we get for hiring a black-hat Orthodox rabbi from Chafetz Chaim Yeshiva (since we can’t afford to hire a Conservative rabbi from JTS or the University of Judaism). If I wanted to follow a right-wing Orthodox interpretation of halachah/Jewish law, I wouldn’t be a member of a Conservative synagogue.