The Church in the East was struggling for survival under Turkish occupation. Its modesty and humility have been imposed, and its suffering along with the people made it one with them (look at the Ecumenical Patriarchy even today!).
That wasn't always so. When the East was the seat of Imperial power, during the last five centuries of the 1st millennium, corruption and — indeed the worst heresies — came out of it.
It was +John Chrysostom who, as the Bishop of Imperial Constantinople, initiated first reforms with regard to the arrogance, lack of modesty and privileges practiced by the clergy and the laity. He made enemies with the highest echelons of the Imperial Court when he corrected the Empress for her bejeweled appearances in the church.
Protestant revolt, however, started off as an attempt to reform corrupt practices and ended reforming, in fact — rewriting, the 1,500 year-old theology.
When the Lutheran divines approached Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II, hoping to find allies in the Eastern Church, he rebuked them — three times — not over their revolt against corrupt practices of the clergy, but over their corrupt theology.
It is their theology that makes it — ultimately — a different faith and not a disagreement over the same faith (as is the case in the Orthodox and Catholic divisions). Protestant theology is Pauline Christianity.
It was Luther's reinterpretation of theology, and not attempts to correct corrupt practices, that created Protestantism. it could have just as easily happened in the East had the East not been in virtual prison and stripped of its imperial majesty.
Well said, brother Kosta. You have done your homework and have done a good job in trying to see "our" point of view. History has brought about different developments in our respective Churches. Part of "keeping the Scriptures from the people" is a bit of an overexaggeration that stems from the Church's attempt to prevent heretics from putting forth FALSE Scriptures and changing words within them. Also, there was not a major humanism and nominalism movement in the East as in the West. While this brought about rapid development in science and philosophy and the arts, it also pumped up man's ego into thinking that HE could solve the world's problems - leading to an often-rationalization of the faith and loss of mysticism in the West.
We Christians are subject to the forces outside of us in our society. While we are pilgrims in the world, we still must appeal to the world to bring it to Christ. Since the culture changed, the Church had to explain its doctrines and beliefs in a new way that would touch the heart of the "pagan" humanist. Thus, it may appear that the Church of the West has "changed". But this hides the fact that the Church's mission is to preach the Gospel - and we must then make it accessible to the people of the world. We don't change the meaning of doctrines, but sometimes, the old must pass away so that the new ways help people of today experience our Lord and Savior.
Vatican 2 wrote two documents on this issue: The Constitution of the Church and the Church in the Modern World. They explain the West's action and reaction better than I could.
Regards
I don't even understand what prompted Vatican II, let alone what promoted the Roman Catholic Church to turn everything upside down and "Protestantize" itself almost to the point of being unrecognizable to the Orthodox.
Thank God, that period is now behind us. As Kolo once observed, this Pope has our ears. He speaks and thinks patristic.