And a notion of self sufficiency that is extended to the creation of one's own theology.
I don’t mean to knock the Roman rite, but what St. Paul describes has remained far more explicit in the Eastern liturgies, especially with the epiclesis. I immediately recognized this when I was reading the Greek.
And you are absolutely correct. In the first millennium, Rome was the bastion against herey. In the second, the Greeks regained sanity, and the West has to one or extent or another, fallen short of the mark.
The Priest signs the holy Gifts and says in a low voice: that they may become for all those who partake of them for forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. For sanctification of souls and bodies. For a fruitful harvest of good works. For the strengthening of Thy holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, which Thou didst found on the rock of the faith, so that the gates of Hell might not prevail against it, delivering it from every heresy and from the scandals caused by those who work iniquity, and from the enemies who arise and attack it, until the consummation of the age.
Amen.
Scholasticism pushed Western Christendom away from the spirit of Early Christianity.
American Christians tend to forget that Christianity is an Eastern religion. The error of Scholasticism is that God is within our understanding and that his actions can or should be categorized the way we do with plants, animals, etc.
He is beyond our comprehension and is unknowable to us apart from the Incarnation.