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“While we often discuss differences between these two churches (church authority, the filoque, etc), the atonement doesn’t seem to be one of them. Is there a difference in views?”

Indeed there is. Orthodoxy does not teach, nor has it ever really taught (though a Father here and there has) the “atonement” theory. Orthodoxy looks to the Incarnation, Death and resurrection of Christ as a ransom of mankind from imprisonment by death and the Evil One. These are very different ways of looking at the etiology of our theosis/salvation. As I said earlier, the atonement theory as taught by the Latin Church is not heresy and never was. The idea though that the “Sacrifice on the Cross” was to satisfy some blood lust of God the Father, a belief that is current among some Latin circles now and indeed has been for centuries (I was taught something like that by the nuns as a kid) and even more prevalent among some Western Christian-non-Latins, is perilously close to heresy if not actual heresy.

I just did a lightning tour of the Catechism and found sacrifice and reparation as big words. But then in the section on "descended into Hell" we get "destroying him who had the power of death, that is, the devil."

In my so-called education (and this was reiterated in the recent RCIA for which I was a sponsor) it was said more than one that there is not ONE doctrine of the Atonement. My gloss on that is that it is an especially big problem, and that many ways, each one individually inadequate, to look at it are required to begin to get a grasp of it.

Orthodoxy does not teach, nor has it ever really taught (though a Father here and there has) the “atonement” theory. Orthodoxy looks to the Incarnation, Death and resurrection of Christ as a ransom of mankind from imprisonment by death and the Evil One.

This is rather interesting Kolo. The early western church fathers taught a blood atonement in their writings so I wonder how the western and eastern churches reconciled this until the great split in 1000AD? Here are a very few excerpts from a very few of some great Church fathers who taught a blood atonement:

St. Clements (150AD)

1 Clem. 7:4 Let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ and understand how precious it is unto His Father, because being shed for our salvation it won for the whole world the grace of repentance.

1 Clem. 12:7 And moreover they gave her a sign, that she should hang out from her house a scarlet thread, thereby showing beforehand that through the blood of the Lord there shall be redemption unto all them that believe and hope on God.

1 Clem. 49:6 in love the Master took us unto Himself; for the love which He had toward us, Jesus Christ our Lord hath given His blood for us by the will of God, and His flesh for our flesh and His life for our lives.

St. Mathetes

He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal.

St. Iraenus

As far as concerned the apostasy, indeed, He redeems us righteously from it by His own blood; but as regards us who have been redeemed, [He does this] graciously. For He fought and conquered; for He was man contending for the fathers, and set free the weak, and endowed His own handiwork with salvation, by destroying sin.

Justin Martyr

And as the blood of the passover saved those who were in Egypt, so also the blood of Christ will deliver from death those who have believed.

My understanding is the Catholic thinking on the atonement NOW is very similar to Eastern thought. I'd be interested in the names of some eastern authors around the 1st-3rd century (perferably NOT in Greek). :O)