“As matter of curiosity, why do you suppose that there was a Protestant Revolution, as the nuns of my youth used to call it, in the Church in the West where there was/is Petrine Authority and no such thing in the Church in the East where there isn’t and never was any Petrine authority, at least not as it is being defined here?”
The base problem is that while there are vast superficial differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, at the core they subscribe to the same authority principal. This is why it is sometimes observed by the more polemical Orthodox that Protestants and Catholics are really two sides of the same coin. All Protestants are crypto-Papists and the Roman Catholic Church was the first Protestant denomination. They all believe in the authority of an individual person to interpret scripture and doctrine infallibly. The only real difference being in the number of Popes they have. Protestants have millions, with wholly predictable results. While Catholics only have one, though they have at times had long and bitter disputes over who that one is/was.
That approach to authority is antithetical to Orthodoxy where it is the Church as a whole that decides important doctrinal issues with the sensus fidelium guided by Scripture, the Creed, the Fathers and Holy Tradition, often, though not always, expressed in the decrees of the OEcumenical Synods.
The members of the Greek Orthodox Church believe that the only infallible authority is an ecumenical council of all the bishops of the world. They believe that there were only seven such councils held before Eastern Schism, when the Eastern churches split from Rome. They say the charism of infallibility is now inoperative or nonexistent and will be until the Eastern churches are reunited with Rome.
This is in stark contrast to their predecessors at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, who said “Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo [the then-reigning Pope Leo I].The matter is closed. Let him who will not listen to Leo be anathema.”
Often times in Protestant circles, we hear about the Holy Spirit informing oneself of the Word of God. But there are two things about this that are inherently contradictory.
First, the Word of God is both the written and the unwritten Word (John 21: 25). The early Church Fathers checked and crossed check the written from the unwritten word of Christ for nearly three centuries before they came up the with the authenticity of the canonical texts in the Synod of Rome in AD 382. That authority did not vanish either a thousand years later with the Great Schism or the Reformation eleven centuries later.
Second, the Hoy Spirit is not some weathervane that changes course and direction over time. The Words of Christ have a compelling coherence to it, that He established ONE Church
Matthew 16: 19: “And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.” Followed by Matthew 28: 20: “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined you. And behold, “I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age.”
Thus we can all agree there is ONE truth for ALL time.
Thus there are no two sides to this coin you speak of. The center of Catholic worship is the Mass and the Holy Eucharist. You deny this and what’s left is a vapid nonsense open to exploitation by anyone from the likes of a Billy Graham to Jimmy Swaggart or a Benny Hinn or Joel Osteen. They are all cut from the same cloth. Not having a clue about what is the Word of God each gallivants on journey of their own to authoritatively tell us what is the word of God having denied its central truth and yet these same folks find themselves in a conundrum.
Either you accept Petrine infallibility and the validity of the canonical texts or you don’t. If you do not admit to Petrine infallibility, then surely the selection of the books in the Bible is suspect as well.
Thus when mainline Protestant denominations now admit married lesbian and gays as pastors, it not that the Holy Spirit suddenly took flight. They never had the Holy Spirit to begin with. The Holy Spirit is not some bird that takes flight from one branch of Christianity to another.