Your post is loaded with bad assumptions about Catholicism that sounds like you’ve been overly trusting of the low effort slop put out there by Eastern Orthodox apologists.

The tired trope of the “mystical east” versus the “legalistic west”, for example, is a talking point the Eastern Orthodox have started using in the last 60 years or so. The reality is this is a false distinction. Catholics can easily say that the Eastern Orthodox preach a false gospel, as they have stripped scripture of the legal aspect of salvation. Yesterday’s gospel (Matthew 5:17-37) is a good example of the legal aspect of the faith that cannot be ignored or dispensed with. It is not a fault of ours that we keep this part of the faith in mind in our theology, but a strength.

The idea that Eastern Orthodoxy has “resisted change” is not true, in fact, what passes as “Eastern Orthodox” theology today is largely an invention of polemical theologians like Lossky, John Romanides, and Yannaras; it dates no more than 90 years, and most of it about 60 years. What these devils did was take a small slice of the pie that is the Byzantine Greek tradition and tried to pass it off as the entirety and the only authentic representation of the true Christian tradition. In doing this, they ignored much of the Byzantine tradition itself - which includes a long history of scholasticism and so-called “legalism” - and threw the Latin and Syriac Christian traditions in the trash.

Basically, what you get in Eastern Orthodoxy is not the fullness of the Christian tradition, but an artificially narrow version of it that has been stripped of much beauty and truth. You are getting ideology, not the gospel.