One of the criticisms of Protestantism is how it allows everyone to be their own popes and decide on doctrines on their own without having to justify it with church teaching. I will grant that because of the way Protestantism is set up and particularly with the non-denominational churches that this tendency is more pronounced then with the Catholic and Orthodox. However, with the way the Western world is now with everyone being encouraged to do their own research and the general distrust of any sort of institutional authority both secular and ecclesiastical (which I will also grant was a result of the Protestant Reformation) this mentality has spread to pretty much everyone in the West and I don't think you can claim that Catholics and Orthodox are spared from this phenomena.
I'm sure we all know plenty of liberal Catholics that without shame go against church teachings on LGBT or other issues that offend the modern secular liberal consensus but this happens from the opposite end as well. I'll present as an example this thread that was claiming Western Europeans are the lost tribes of Israel
https://christisking.cc/threads/10-lost-tribes-we-wuz-kangs-bruh.825 One of the biggest proponents of this theory on this forum is a self-identified trad Catholic who is against the modernist innovations in the Catholic church but is introducing a theory that is much more of a theological innovation than say performing Mass in a vernacular language instead of Latin
The other people who were jumping in agreement with this theory were Orthodox members of this forum. Keep in mind pretty much every Orthodox member of this forum is going to be of the more "based" type rather than the ones that mostly only identify as Orthodox because of ethnic/cultural considerations. In other words these are the type of Orthodox who are going to refer to ecumenical councils and church father teachings to justify whatever theological position they are taking. However, in arguing for the "Europeans are the true Israelites" theory they are not citing any sort of Church Fathers but instead is citing St. GroyperMaxxing of Bitchute. They are also using their own Biblical interpretations as supporting arguments for their position which strikes me as very Protestant. I asked the Catholic and Orthodox members in that thread the sort of views the were espousing in the thread haven't been taught by the teachers in their churches and the responses they were giving me seemed to be them telling me they as laypeople somehow managed to stumble on some sort of teaching that their bishops and saints had failed to discover despite the huge theological seismic shift that would take place if they were true. If I wanted to be more cheeky I would suggest that they must view themselves as some sort of red-pilled version of Luther or Calvin trying to red pill Catholic or Orthodox church.
