Catholic Dictionary
Find accurate definitions of over 5,000 Catholic terms and phrases (including abbreviations). Based on Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.
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PROFANE
The secular or merely human as compared with the sacred or divine. "Profane" does not, of itself, imply profanation, since the whole created universe, including human beings, is technically profane in contrast to the Creator, whose essence is to be holy precisely because he is the "totally other" who transcends the world that he made and continually sustains. (Etym. Latin profanus, lying outside the temple, ordinary, not holy.)
