Whether ORIA should adopt a vocabulary of the sacred — words like sacred, holy, reverence, and transcendence — is one of its deliberately unresolved questions (oq-0027). This page presents the question honestly rather than settling it.
The working direction
There is a working direction, but nothing is adopted: something might be treated as sacred because it is held worthy of deep reverence, protection, and attention — without requiring agreement about any supernatural ontology. Of the candidate words, “reverence” appears safest, “holy” least adoptable, and “sacred” and “transcendence” somewhere between.
Why it is held open
The vocabulary carries real risks that ORIA does not want to import unnoticed: vagueness (sacred as a mere intensifier), appropriation and religious dilution, covert theology (smuggling an ontology in through a word), and emotional manipulation or aesthetic branding. Until the terms prove genuinely useful in actual prose, the question stays open.
How it would be resolved
Resolution requires editorial practice, translation review, comparative review, and a recorded decision — not a website page deciding by using the words. This page therefore uses them only to describe the question. An open question is closed only by a recorded decision, never by content that quietly assumes an answer.