Seer of Bayside

In 1968, Veronica Lueken, a Catholic housewife in Bayside, Queens, New York, began to experience visions of the Virgin Mary. Over almost three decades, she imparted some 300 messages received from Mary, Jesus, and other heavenly personages. These revelations, many of which were broadcast on local television, severely criticized the liturgical changes of Vatican II and the sinful state of American society. Unless everyone repented, Lueken warned, a "fiery ball" would collide with the Earth, causing devastation around the world. Her response to repeated efforts by the authorities of the Catholic Church to dismiss, discredit, and banish her was to declare that Pope Paul VI was a communist imposter and that the Church had been in error since Vatican II, and to find new venues in which to communicate her revelations. Lueken died in 1995, but her followers still gather to promote her messages at a monument in Flushing Meadows Park, on the site of the Vatican Pavilion of the 1964-65 World's Fair. Known as "the Baysiders," they believe that St. Robert Bellarmine Church, from which Lueken was banned from holding vigils, will someday become "the Lourdes of America" and that Leuken will be canonized as a saint. Scholars have characterized the Baysiders variously as a new religious movement, a form of folk piety, and a traditionalist sect. The Baysiders regard themselves as loyal Catholics-perhaps the last in existence. They oppose both the Church hierarchy, which they believe compromised by modernism, and ultra-traditionalist Catholic groups who believe that the papal see is vacant. Joseph Laycock draws on both untapped archival materials and extensive ethnographic research to unfold the fascinating story of Veronica Lueken and the Baysiders from 1968 to the present. He shows how the Baysiders have diverged significantly from mainstream Catholic culture while keeping in dialogue with Church authorities, and offers insight into ways the persistence of the Baysiders and other Marian groups have contributed to greater amenability from Church authorities to devotional culture and private revelation. Veronica Lueken and the Baysiders is an invaluable study of the perennial struggle between lay Catholics and Church authorities over who has the power to define Catholic culture.