If I had been active, I think I'd react the same way as your wife. Many things are far removed from me now, but sometimes I can still put myself in that "state" if I want to, and thus see how an active witness would react.
I think if it had been me being 'challenged' like this while I was active, I would actually get scared. And what happens when people get scared? They get angry. It's a defense mechanism.
As a witness you've been taught circular logic for many years, maybe a whole lifetime (as is my case) - - I actually didn't know what circular logic even meant just a couple of years ago.
I would see it mentioned in debates on the internet between atheists and christians, but I did not get what it meant. Weird.
The thing is.... as a witness, "you have the Truth". And you've been taught that as the world comes to its end, Satan will be more and more active, and the persecution of witnesses will only get worse and worse.
What this does, is it vaccinates you against any attack. Because if it isn't from the Watchtower, then it must be from Satan. And that's actually quite scary when you're a witness. So your mind goes into hiding. And even if you're "pressed against the wall" figuratively speaking, by an argument you can't refute, you will say to yourself "Well - if I can only get through this, Jehovah will come through and make everything alright, and will explain all this to us. In the meantime, I'll just smooth it over and put it under the carpet".
As for the KM article, I think most active witnesses won't even notice what it really says. Then there'll be a few who will, but they will rationalize it and smooth it over as "Well - this must mean we're not supposed to make study groups using non-WTS material in order to 'test' our faith, but I don't do that anyway when I for instance use Wikipedia, so this doesn't apply to me". Then there will be a few others who do see what this means, and will be... suspicious, but since their whole life (both the current and their future) is challenged if they make something out of it, they will instead abide by the article.
After all, they "have the Truth". Why? "Because the Bible says so". But how can we prove the Bible is right? "Well, it mentions the earth as round and hanging in thin air, it says that Pi is ~3 (which is so close to correct that we can accept it - maybe God isn't a math buff) and it has some prophecies that are 100% correct - at least if you use the Bible as the authority when it comes to chronology. Oh - and because the Bible says so, of course.
So how do you get through that thick wall? I'm actually not sure how I got through my own wall. But I think - in my case - that even though I was active - I've never been a very spiritual person, and I always questioned things. But I tended to put those questions into a compartment in the back of my brain and surmise that it would be answered someday, if not in this system of things, then in the next. But in the end, it dawned on me that I had a couple of points that went against WTS (or that there simply were no WTS answers for at all), and I couldn't with clear conscience preach to others about something I didn't believe myself. These were questions that were not very likely to ever come up in a normal door-to-door situation, but nevertheless I finally understood that if I met a person who asked those specific questions, I would either have to say "Well, the WTS teaches this, but I think that..." or I could tell them exactly what the WTS teaches (or I would have to say that there are no answers to those specific questions), but then I would be dishonest anyway and teaching something I thought was wrong. So I stopped preaching. And when you stop preaching, you'll slowly run out of friends in KH ('cause you don't have any ministry anecdotes to share like the others do, and are considered not good company). And when that happens, you really don't feel like going to meetings anymore. And when that happens, you get more time to actually think. It becomes a snowball down a hill. Well - that's more or less my story, anyway.
As for your wife, I think you've gotten some good advice in this thread already. That being said, I think even though that conversation was hurtful and awkward, that you may have planted a seed there. Her brain has to go through that information. If it hadn't been for you, she would read the KM article and just go "well, that's necessary in our times. Good for the FDS." But now, because of what you said, she may actually think a little deeper about it. It may not affect her just yet, but over time it just might.
Good luck.
