BREAKING: BISHOP “CONCERNED FOR PRISONERS’ RIGHTS” BUT SILENT ON ENOCH BURKE (500 DAYS IN PRISON)
When asked about the ongoing incarceration of teacher Enoch Burke after he would not endorse transgender ideology, Bishop Martin Hayes said, “I have nothing to say.”
Bishop Martin Hayes is the Catholic Bishop of Kilmore (Co. Cavan) and Liaison Bishop to the Irish Prison Service.
On 27 November Bishop Hayes released a statement, widely reported in the media, expressing his deep concern at the commencement of certain building works at the Chapel in Mountjoy Prison where teacher Enoch Burke is imprisoned.
The Bishop said there had not been appropriate consultation with prisoners or with prison chaplains regarding this project, and that the “rush to complete works on the prison chapel, without full consultation with all stakeholders” was “an affront to prisoners and their families.”
RTÉ News reported that the Chapel is used by about 25 prisoners once every two weeks.
The Bishop added that “I can only conclude that…prisoners’ rights in Mountjoy – in terms of their freedom of religious expression – have been suppressed by authorities.”
Only a minute’s walk from the Mountjoy Prison Chapel, however, is the cell which holds Enoch Burke, a Christian teacher incarcerated for his religious beliefs.
Enoch Burke has spent over 500 days in prison after refusing to use the ‘they’ pronoun to address a child, and thus encourage that child on the road to ‘transitioning’, puberty blockers, irreversible surgery, severe mental health issues, and sadly for many, suicide.
The Irish Courts have categorically denied him his constitutional rights to freedom of religion and expression and have taken his liberty from him for over 500 days.
Bishop Martin Hayes expresses ‘alarm’ at building works in a chapel, but has maintained a deafening silence on Enoch Burke for the almost two-and-a-half years since he was first imprisoned.
In his role as Bishop, Martin Hayes lays claim to be “the qualified representative of Christ”, “representing the Lord in the authentic and fullest form.” He claims to be the direct successor of the Apostles including Peter and Paul, responsible for guiding and instructing the flock of Christ.
Yet when we asked Bishop Hayes about his silence on Enoch Burke, and indeed on the entire issue of anti-Christian transgender ideology with its catastrophic and irreversible impact on young people particularly, he declared that he had “nothing to say.”
It makes little sense that a man who claims to be the “successor of the Apostles” (men who laid down their lives for the truth) has nothing to say on the imprisonment of a teacher for upholding the most basic Christian belief as expressed by Christ in the Gospels - “He which made them in the beginning, made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4).