Geo,
Great rhetorical point.
May I comment again briefly, that having pleasure in things is not always an evil. Many "moderns" seem to think that Catholicism is adverse to all joy. I remember a witty saying by G.K. Chesterton along the lines that for him, Catholicism was a piece of steak and a glass of wine.
Let's face it; food when you're hungry is pleasureable. Drink when you are thirsty is pleasureable. Shade when at work is pleasureable. These things are not evil. Even prayer can be pleasureable. With higher goods like prayer, however, the "accidental" effects (i.e., pleasure) must not be valued above the substance of the good desired.
John of the Cross, if I may make another brief reference, speaks of sensory pleasures that can actually be beneficial to the soul, if they lift the soul quickly to God; for example, if you, like Paul commands, "eat and drink to the glory of God," maybe you'll say grace and
enjoy your meal, praising God for it. It is no mistake the Church uses bells, incense, holy chants, beautiful tapestries and gilded vessels for the Eucharist, etc. These things can be good and even beneficial for the soul; even as St. Teresa of Avila says, she made a huge mistake in her early years in thinking that Christ must first be sought only through his divinity, as some quietists would propose. No, she insisted, we must approach through his sacred humanity; as Catherine of Siena insists, we must go by the way of Christ crucified.
Even Augustine in his Confessions asks, "Quid ergo amo, cum Deum amo?" (What do I love, therefore, when I love my God?)
He goes on...Book X, Chapter VI
What however do I love, when I love my God? Not an appearance of body, nor an ornament of time, nor a brightness of light, nor behold is it that friend with the eyes, not sweet melodies of old songs of old kinds, not of flowers or of perfumes and of sweet aromas, not manna and honey, not arms, suitable for embraces of flesh: not these do I love, when I love my God. And yet I love a certain light, a certain voice, a certain fragrance, and a certain food and a certain embrace, when I love my God, light, voice, smell, food, an embrace of my inward man, because there shines into my soul what does not occupy a place, and there it sounds, time does not snatch away. When it smells, the breeze does not scatter, and there it tastes, which voracity does not diminish, and there it adheres, which abundance takes not away. This is what I love, when I love my God.
Then he continues with his inquiry of creation, in heaven and earth. All these say, "Non sumus Deus tuus." (We are not your God).
I feel like I'm going off the topic (theology of the body) but I think its essential to understand the spiritual corollaries of the doctrine; the principle that C.S. Lewis wrote of in his
Great Divorce : "Shoot for heaven and you get earth thrown in, shoot for earth and you get neither."