So I dug a little deeper and came up with a way to diagnose my problem that isn’t involving PHP versions etc. Once I made the following changes, it was pretty easy to see where the real issue was:
Step one - restore the logging to file
as @Log1x mentions here: Bug: Broken packages/providers are silently skipped · Issue #250 · roots/acorn · GitHub
Adding the logging.php file back in, as @dave referenced here: Log files not being created? - #2 by alwaysblank
Helped me see additional logging in web>app>cache>acorn>logs>application.php
Once I saw this file, it helped me find the real cause of the issue that was throwing my Roots\Acorn\View\ViewServiceProvider into an error
(my cause was an incorrect class reference that gets built dynamically somewhere else in my code)
Hope this helps!