Church of England ministers have opposed what they call the “pragmatic” approach taken by some authorities to sex and sport, which ignores the sometimes prevalent link with human trafficking.

The emergence of the “mega-brothel”, facilitated by some German cities during the 2006 football World Cup to meet the demands of the estimated three million fans at the tournament, horrified the dioceses of Winchester and Newcastle.

Signs of the same thing happening at the South Africa football World Cup in 2010 prompted the dioceses to table a motion at next month’s General Synod calling on the British government to prevent such a thing happening at the London Olympics 2012.

Tens of thousands of extra prostitutes were bussed into Germany, many of whom were likely to have been trafficked, the ministers said.

Studies suggested that prostitution levels may have in fact decreased during the World Cup.

But Christians reject human trafficking and forced prostitution because “any kind of slavery is wrong”, and because to trade in human life is a “deliberate affront to God’s valuing of human beings”.

“All that forces a person into a less than whole existence is to be resisted since they are prevented from flourishing in the image of God who created them and us,” the motion says.

The English church ministers are not the only ones to warn about sex trafficking and sport. During the Euro 2008 football tournament campaigners presented a graphic 60-second advert which was shown on television, at Switzerland’s four Euro 2008 stadiums and at public fan zones warning about the sale of young women in that country.

Should the London Olympics adopt the same policy? Or is sport and sex inevitable?

Will sport ever be clean?

“Do Catholic countries have better football players?”

I was surprised to see this headline on the Austrian Catholic website kath.net today… and even more surprised to see they seemed to mean it seriously.

“A look at the participants in the final round of the European football championship in Switzerland and Austria suggests this,” kath.net writes in a report from Vienna. “In seven of the 16 participating countries, Catholics are clearly in the majority: Poland (95 percent of the population), Spain (92 percent), Italy (90 percent), Portugal (90 percent), Croatia (77 percent), Austria (69 percent ) and France (51 percent). Only one Protestant stronghold confronts them, Sweden. Of the 8.8 million inhabitants of the northern European country, 80 percent are Lutherans.”

There’s no hint of analysis of why this should be relevant, or mention of the personal faith — or lack thereof — of the players on these national teams. This purely statistical view (sports fans love stats, don’t they?) goes on to point out which participating countries have large numbers of both Catholics and Protestants (Germany, Switzerland and Netherlands).

The article notes that only 32 percent of all Czechs call themselves Christians, making the Czech Republic the most “de-churched” participating country, i.e. the country where religion has retreated the most. Even there, though, the Catholics make up the largest group among the believers (26.5 percent of the population). So maybe they still have a chance after all.

No religion story in Europe is complete without a mention of Islam, so the Vienna-datelined article ended up with a comment about Turkey. The Turkish team, by the way, beat Austria’s co-hosts Switzerland 2-1 on Wednesday in Basel and face the “de-churched” Czechs on Sunday in Geneva, aka “the Protestant Rome”.

“The only Muslim-dominated country in the European Championship is Turkey, where 98 percent of the 72 million inhabitants are Muslims. The 120,000 Christians there have a hard time because of much discrimination,” it wrote. “In Europe there are 224.5 million Catholics, 57.8 million Protestants, 39 million Orthodox, 15.7 million Muslims and 1.6 million Jews.”

These statistics appear to be completely irrelevant to Euro 2008. In fact, with the large Catholic majority in Europe that kath.net mentions at the end, it’s almost inevitable that many countries with a Catholic majority will end up in the final rounds every time the championships are held. Can any football fan tell me if there’s something this religion editor is missing?