he has remained except for advanced training in counseling at Pittsburgh Pastoral Institute. Helminiak was elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, was certified as a Fellow of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, and is licensed as a Professional Counselor (LPC) in the state of Georgia. Also in 1995, Helminiak submitted to the Vatican a formal resignation from active ministry although he remains a priest according to Catholic teaching: "Once a priest, always a priest." As is not uncommon, the Vatican never responded to his resignation, which fact he takes jokingly to mean that the Vatican is allowing him to continue to speak for the Catholic Church. From 1975 to 1978 at Boston College, Helminiak served as teaching assistant to Prof. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, SJ (1904-1984), the philosopher, theologian, economist, and methodologist whom Newsweek styled the Thomas Aquinas of the twentieth century. Lonergan is reputed to have integrated classical philosophy with contemporary science and, in the process, to have resolved the Kantian problem of knowing the "thing in itself." Building on the thought of giants of the Western Tradition—such as Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Newman, Einstein, Hilbert, Gödel, Heisenberg—Lonergan portrays the human mind as a self-transcending, normatively structured, self-correcting dynamism geared to the universe of "being," all that there is to be known and loved. He refers to this dimension of the mind as intentional consciousness and frequently also as the human spirit. Taking Lonergan seriously, Helminiak used his analysis of consciousness or human spirit to develop a theory of spirituality that is grounded in humanity and only subsequently and optionally, although naturally, opens onto questions of God and human relationship and possible union with God. This humanistic emphasis is the uniqueness of Helminiak's psychology of spirituality, which claims to depict the spiritual core that runs through all religions and cultures. Helminiak's two-volume technical study, The Human Core of Spirituality and Religion and the Human Sciences, provides detailed elaboration of this theory. Brain, Consciousness, and God stands as an overall synthesis and grounded argument for this theory. In collaboration with Drs. Barnet D. Feingold (Veterans Administration, retired) and David Jenks (University of West Georgia) Helminiak is pursuing field research on this theory. Psychology and spirituality Helminiak's psychology of spirituality offers a coherent Western alternative to prevalent understandings of spirituality based on Eastern philosophy. Whereas Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologies see God most fundamentally as Creator and,