A common critique for sure 🤝. I am a neophyte (my family and I were baptized last February) and, like you, started familiarizing myself with Church History fairly recently (the COVID era allowed for a deep dive into money and Christianity for me). I was a blank slate too, as I did not grow up in any sort of church so Orthodoxy seemed so obvious to me. A few years back I read "The Life of Moses" by St. Gregory of Nyssa and "Hymns on Paradise" by St. Ephraim the Syrian and they blew my mind and sent me in a direction I never thought I'd go and it made me wonder why we didn't hear more about these Holy men here in the West and how they've defended the faith for millenia. I really enjoy all of the dialogue going on between Rome, Protestants, and the Orthodox though my immaturity in the faith often leads to an over zealous stance on things that I am far too retarded to defend.