It took years for the Legion to admit that the CDF was morally certain about Maciel. In the meantime they pretended the Pope had subjected Maciel to a dry martyrdom that would rain new graces on the Legion and the Church.
How did they get so many people to suspend critical thinking for those years? The way Maciel taught them to. Keep them busy in pursuit of a grand cause and wrapped up in their own subjective experiences.
John Zmirak:
What is more, from all I have witnessed, [Maciel] used in his lay movements a modern technique mostly employed in political groups. I learned of it from a book by Douglas Hyde, Dedication and Leadership, in which the author (a former Communist converted to the Church) sorts out the methods of Leninists, searching for those that are morally neutral and highly effective, which could serve the Church. (I read this book at a right-wing activist camp, so I know that others are using it, too.) The key to making people commit themselves to a movement, the Communists learned and Hyde revealed, was to keep them busy. To make them work harder and longer than they'd ever thought possible -- even at tasks that don't really need to be done. A person's devotion to a cause, Hyde coolly explained, is proportionate not to what he gets from it but what he puts into it. So don't make things too easy. Make people feel useful, and keep them digging up holes so others can fill them up. (It's telling, perhaps, that Hyde rejoined the Commies and died outside the Church.)
