It's interesting to me that the question is almost entirely a Western one. I once asked an Orthodox how they answered their children when a particular question concerning the Holy Eucharist was asked. His reply was: they don't ask.
It really is a Western mindset that resulted in this. And Protestants and atheists. These arose in the West.
I think there are positives in the Church's Western mind, science and scholasticism and the university system come to mind, but there are negatives also.
I love reading St. John Chrysostom, the Desert Fathers, the Philokalia; I recommend "Orthodox Spirituality by A Monk of the Eastern Church" to all Christians.
I think the two lungs together, taking the best of both, is the ideal we should strive for.
Protestants and Roman Catholics are stuck in the Middle Ages.
The polemics I see on this board unveil the shallowness of Protestant and Roman Catholic scholasticism that reduces everything to a medieval debate over scriptural interpretation.
I became a Catholic, but I never became a Scholastic.
Had Martin Luther studied the Greek fathers instead of William of Ockham, perhaps he would have led his followers into Eastern Orthodoxy.
In my Melkite Catholic parish, the priest asks God’s forgiveness.
The early Medieval words of absolution in the Roman rite did the same. It’s not the priest who forgives sins. It is God himself acting through the priest who forgives sin and reconciles us to both God and Man.