SO now three members of the Burke family from Castlebar are in jail, or heading there, after Enoch Burke’s mother and sister, pictured, were sentenced to a fortnight behind bars for contempt of court this week.
And as his father was jailed for two months in 2024, that makes four people from the same household imprisoned for basically the same thing – an absolutely unshakeable conviction that they are in the right and everyone else, from High Court judges to journalists to employers to ordinary citizens, is in the wrong.
Everyone who challenges them is a liar and a perjurer and is going to Hell. They are the only ones with a functioning moral compass; the rest of us are cowards, sinners, blasphemers and degenerates.
And they are prepared to suffer whatever punishment this modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah imposes on them rather than abandon their convictions.
If that means repeated or indefinite terms in our overcrowded jails, then that is the martyrdom they’ll willingly endure for their faith.
The history of every religion is certainly replete with martyrs – righteous people who made the ultimate sacrifice in defiance of the Godless infidels, believing that they would be rewarded in the hereafter.
But at what point does an honourable conviction become a dangerous delusion?
There’s a thin line, it seems to me, between noble martyrdom and misguided self-harm.
Judge Brian Cregan was one of my lecturers when I studied law many years ago, and I remember him as a decent, humane and good-humoured man, approachable in the way some other tutors were not, always willing to cut a student a bit of slack.
The last thing he wants to do, I’m sure, is to jail otherwise law-abiding people alongside violent criminals, but the Burkes have given him absolutely no choice.
There is no other recourse available when someone deliberately and relentlessly flouts court orders or disrupts and abuses a judge on the bench, making wildly defamatory and personal accusations.
As he keeps telling Enoch Burke, he could be freed immediately if he simply undertook not to trespass on the private grounds of Wilson’s Hospital School, free to preach his views on transgenderism till the cows come home.
But as he now approaches a cumulative two-year spell in jail, Enoch Burke looks increasingly like a man who is unable to change his ways, entirely incapable of even considering the merit of a viewpoint other than his own.
And, in a way, that is the hallmark of a genuine conviction, the steadfast refusal, even moral inability, to surrender regardless of the consequences.
Consider Father Ted writer Graham Linehan, who has lost his marriage, his friends, his career and his reputation over his opposition to transgenderism.
I happen to believe that he is an authentic modern-day martyr who has endured intolerable punishment for his resistance to a dangerous dogma. But to others, no doubt, he is a deluded zealot, unhinged by hatred and intolerance.
Whether he deserves compassion and admiration, or punishment and ruination, depends entirely on your view of his beliefs.
But you cannot deny that he has chosen a difficult path in pursuit of his convictions. Yet he simply couldn’t live with himself, it seems, if he did otherwise.
Was that Chinese man who stood in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square a self-harming delusionist or a brave martyr?
What about the young Iranians who took to the streets to protest against their barbaric government last month, having seen their friends mown down by the savage regime’s machine guns?
Is it ever entirely sane to be willing to suffer and die for your beliefs?
Isn’t the more rational and sensible instinct to protect yourself, whether from death or imprisonment?
Is it disingenuous to admire Graham Linehan for his tenacity, if you agree with him, but mock and scorn the Burkes for theirs, because it’s incomprehensible to most reasonable people?
I don’t know what motivates the Burke family to the extent that they are prepared to go to jail for what they believe.
I don’t understand why, as clearly brilliant people, they continue to confuse the legitimate penalty for trespass and contempt of court with a tyrannical punishment for freedom of speech and worship.
But it is beginning to look as if they are driven by something beyond their control and I can’t be alone in wondering whether, if that is truly the case, jail is really where they belong.