As I state above, this view was never the view of the eastern church as far as I can tell. However it WAS the view of the western church for centuries. The Catholic doctrine moved towards the Orthodox position 500 years ago.
Catholics have abandoned the blood atonement concept favoring a similar Orthodox view (hence the discussions of St. Gregory and Anselm). Protestants, contrary to what the Catholics would like to have us believe, have always believed in the blood atonement. However, in some Protestant circles there is a watering down of this doctrine.
Where you consider it "blasphemous", I consider it essential. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. I didn't see a discussion of this in St. Gregory's writings.
And Dr. Eckleburg provided out-of-context, solitary Paulian verses (as usual) to back that up. I would prefer a concordance approach, one that would show that +Paul and other Apostles were on the same sheet of music.
+Paul is known to remind us that some of his judgments are his own and not the Lord's commandments, so I always wonder if what he says is his own interpretation or actually something our Lord said and taught.
One thing is certain: the Eastern tradition never did teach that God demanded a sacrifice (cf Mat 9:13).
I am not ready to discuss St. Anselm intelligently. Maybe next week I will. My gut feeling is that the transactional semantics of atonement: Christ buying salvation from God, is a gross to the point of heresy approximation of what St. Anselm taught.