A very useful post. People who want to sound enlightened run around yapping about “dialectic” ( I remember sir edmund Hillary Clinton doing So a few years ago). But the denial of contradiction is just plain insanity. Yeah, I’d say this idea has taken root.
Dialectic, which at bottom means something very like "conversation", is a potent -- useful but dangerous -- metaphor for, well, a lot of things.
One example of the flow of a serious conversation is that two people examine and try their thinking. Sooner or later they find a seemingly unresolvable contradiction. So they trot back to their premises to see if there's a way they can be re-formulated. Once (or IF) they find a satisfactory re-formulation, they then trot right through the argument, maybe even right past the former apparent contradiction, and ahead until some new contradiction appears. And so it goes.
Even so for theologians. It was a while before an adequate expression could be given to the view of the operation of grace that made possible the Immaculate conception. Thinking about not only embryology but also the relationship of Christ's saving work to time had to be looked at. It seemed impossible or indecent that the Lord be gestated in the womb of a sinner, yet it seemed just as impossible that someone born before Calvary could be without sin, or that someone who could call the Lord her "savior" would not need saving. But, well, they kept talking about it. And finally an answer appeared.
Dialectic. not always such a bad thing.