Perhaps what is most fascinating about Cardinal Connell's interview with Stephen Costello is the insight it gives into the mind of a man who is leader of the largest Catholic diocese in Ireland - also one of the largest in Europe - and who has been a member of the Vatican's hugely influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 1993.
First, and not to flog a dead horse but to set the record straight, it should be noted that both the cardinal and Archbishop Walton Empey have exactly the same academic qualifications where theology is concerned. Both have Bachelor of Divinity degrees. The cardinal secured his at St Patrick's College Maynooth in 1951 and Archbishop Empey was awarded his in 1968 after study at King's College Nova Scotia in Canada, where he was serving at the time.
When Cardinal Connell was appointed archbishop in 1988, he automatically became a Doctor of Divinity - this comes with the office of bishop in the Catholic church. The cardinal would have greater actual academic competence than the archbishop in philosophy, particularly metaphysics. In 1953 he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy at Louvain for a thesis on The Passivity of Understanding in Malebranche, a 17th-century French philosopher-priest.
Both men have received honorary doctorates in literature. Cardinal Connell received his from the National University of Ireland in 1981 and Archbishop Empey received his in 1996 from the Central School of Religion in Indiana.
Philosophically, the cardinal is very much of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. He is a Thomist, a dedicated follower of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the great medieval Dominican theologian and one of the Catholic Church's elite corps of 33 "super-saints" or Doctors of the Church.
Since the Council of Trent, which met in three sessions between 1545 and 1563 in response to the Reformation and which formulated the body of doctrine/theology which was to dominate Catholic Church thinking until the second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965), Aquinas has remained probably the most influential thinker in Catholicism.
He was heavily influenced by the Greek philosophers Plato and Artistotle, Aristotle particularly. You might say he found "a third way" accommodating both philosophers, particularly where an understanding of the human soul was concerned.
The "dilution" of St Thomas's influence since Vatican II does not please the cardinal at all. He said in the interview: "St Thomas had all the proper metaphysical distinctions, such as between substance and accident, which are essential. They throw all that out as garbage in the present day, with the result that they are metaphysically illiterate. And they go around in a fog talking about these things and there is no real appreciation of what they are talking about."
He returned to the theme. "What is interesting about the second Vatican Council is that all the great figures of the council were brought up on the Thomistic revival and they had metaphysics, but after the council, and when the whole Biblical movement took over, they threw out metaphysics. It was said that the bishops sang "Should auld Aquinas be forgot!".
Even the current prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ,was party to this, he intimated. "Ratzinger, of course, is a poacher- turned-gamekeeper! He was one of the liberals of the second Vatican Council. Ratzinger was always an excellent theologian. I am not for any moment suggesting that he was heterodox (unorthodox)."
Which may help explain why the congregation felt the need to issue Dominis Iesus last year, wherein it clarifies the Catholic view of itself, other Christians and other religions. You might say it was a case of the metaphysicians striking back. It may also help explain why the Catholic bishops of these islands issued the One Bread One Body document on inter-church communion in 1998. Indeed it was stated then that this was to dispel confusion among Catholics here.
Addressing differences between Catholic and Protestant approaches generally, the cardinal said "you could open the Bible and ask yourself 'what does this mean?' and that's what the Protestants do. The other way is to ask 'how has the Bible been understood in the tradition of the life of the Church?' That is the Catholic way.
"We just don't go on Scripture alone. Scripture itself is a product of the tradition of the Church. The tradition of the Church was there before Scripture. Scripture expresses the tradition of the Church and Scripture is always understood in the light of the tradition of the Church.
"If you look at all the evidence we have of the Church's understanding of the Eucharist and what it is that the authors of Sacred Scripture expressed, it [the 'This is my body/blood' words of Christ] is to be taken literally. The earliest expressions of the tradition of the Church date from the second century."
That is "transubstantiation", the Catholic belief that the bread and wine actually becomes the body and blood of Christ at communion. Anglicans however believe in "consubstantiation", that bread and wine, (Christ's) body and blood, co-exist in the Eucharist.
Patsy McGarry is The Irish Times Religious Affairs Correspondent