Aren't you hear, basically, looking for the Unified Field Theory of Dogma/Infallibility/Discipline? That isn't legalistic?
The more that we cling to the work of our own hands, the more that we start to fight with each other, divide into camps, become bellicose, and thereby become evil.
It's clear you don't believe the Holy Spirit guides the Church. So why stay within? It seems to me the Orthodox Churches might appeal to you more, with more left to "mystery" and fewer attempts to explain them.
SD
I do believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church.
I don't believe that every opinion of every churchman was a good translation of the intent of the Holy Spirit.
It is not a question of "choosing" which "church" one wishes to belong to. There is only one Church, the one with the Holy Spirit in it, founded by God. Now, the Orthodox Church is, indeed, part of that Church, albeit divided from the Western half by politics and by mutual incomprehensions and theological differences on both sides.
Nevertheless, the sacraments of the Orthodox Church are the sacraments. This is all the Church. That we've divided it because we can't see past our own doctrines, and being legalistic, well, God sees past us and continues to hold the squabbling brethren within His one true Church.
I am not a bit legalistic.
My problem is that some of my Catholic bretheren have gone hard core legalistic on me, and start relying upon (what they presume to be) superior education in specific historical documents and thinkers to impose a rigid set of MANDATORY beliefs upon me, often citing to the doctrine of infallibility.
This requires either a legalistic response, or silence.
The problem with silence is that they are left completely in possession of the field, even when they are wrong.
To wit: many of them don't like the New Mass. The New Mass is the sacred canon of the Catholic Church. It is as holy as the Tridentine Mass. That is not even debatable.
They debate it anyway.
And that forces the ugly legalisms.
And causes me to seek The List of infallible doctrines, so that when a Catholic who is ardently passionate about, say, the prohibition of birth control, or the prohibition on divorced and remarried Catholics from taking the sacrament of communion, I can consult that list and say "Not there".
I am not sure that it is always the best thing to do to hold one's tongue and cling to simple and mystic faith when well-educated and vocal idiots are pronouncing their own opinions as infallible truths of the Church. Others listen to that, and are influenced by it. Sometimes, it is necessary for their peer - me - to push back and say "By what AUTHORITY do you speak?"
On this thread, Limbo came up.
There was also the bit about the wholesale change in the view of baptism from one pope to another. That ought to make us CAUTIOUS. But it doesn't seem to.
Leaving one rite of the Church, the Latin Rite, to go to an Eastern rite of the Church, or the Orthodox Church, is not the answer. I am a Latin. This is the appropriate rite. One is very like another in the essentials.
The short answer to your question is that I'm not really looking for the Unified Field Theory of Infallibility. What I am doing is asking questions that should be able to be answered by anyone who is going to repose too heavily upon Infallibility doctrine and the power of written traditions. When the questions can't be answered, this gives that person a moment's pause, and the opportunity to glimpse something deeper within the faith: that in the end our logic fails, but it's still true because it's held up not by logic, but by the Real Presence of God The Holy Spirit in the Church, especially the Sacraments.
If not one word had ever been written, that would still be true.