If Archbishop Connell is the most controversial of the interviewees in Stephen Costello's The Irish Soul in Dialogue, the most entertaining is Senator David Norris. He talks a lot about his attachment to his friend Ezra; and while he observes the decorum of Leinster House by dressing well when it is sitting, he doesn't see why he should dress up otherwise "just to come into this little rat-hole" of an office.
He also talks about having a soul and not giving a damn if he is seen as eccentric; about the hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy and about James Joyce. There is much about sex, homosexuality, and how gay relationships are different. When Ezra had a boyfriend, Isaac, a disc and javelin champion, "I always said to them that my idea of heaven was Ezra doing the cooking, me doing the tidying and Isaac doing the sex. Hell could be me doing the sex, Ezra doing the tidying and Isaac doing the cooking!"
Norris goes to St Patrick's Cathedral nearly every Sunday but is critical of the changes. "I like the wearing of the copes and all that sort of stuff. They have gone. The new Dean has locked them in the cupboard and instead of the wafers, which he regarded as too Roman, we are now reduced to wholemeal brown sliced bread, which I don't like at all. You get crumbs, which I think is awful. I battled to save the vote on candles in the side aisle, and this awful new liturgy, the product of illiterate minds, both theologically and aesthetically.
And this "Peace of the Lord be with you. And also with you. We will now exchange the sign of peace." We will in our fanny. I won't. I put my hands behind my back and I just say Happy Christmas, Jingle Bells, Merry Easter and all that stuff and whatever you are having yourself, but I do not touch strangers."
Michael D. Higgins is his favourite politician. "I mean he has as silly a voice as I do and he managed to overcome that and become a cabinet minister. You hear him squeaking away. He wouldn't get away with it in England. They kicked out Heath because of his laugh. The English are so stupid."