I agree with you, the change should come from within the Church, and I don't see it as an impossibility, either. Even more likely will be married priests.
And no worries, I have no intention of fighting about any of it.
For those who don't share out thoughts on using "they" and "them," to talk about individual people of unknown or irrelevant sex or gender, with a neuter personal pronoun:
Let's take for instance our friend here ACW. ACW represents as an individual man, but we don't really know whether ACW (not a personal pronoun, notice) is a man or a lady, or one of the other 59 genders they (ACW) are so hopped up about in this thread. But there's nothing logically preventing ACW from being more than one individual each contributing to the one user account, ACW. Whuhimber may be the work of many individuals. So in this case it even is justified to use the plural "they" when referring to ACW. But in any case unless ACW is actually verified as an individual man or individual lady, when using "they" as a singular personal pronoun, it is appropriate to refer to them (ACW) as they.
In most cases that we both are probably referring to when we express our desire for a neuter personal pronoun in English though, it's only an individual that is the subject. The first example that popped into my head was a document concerning a technical or medical or legal professional. There's no justification to ever use "him" or "her" exclusively, and it's cumbersome to always use "him or her," and inefficient. But when we are talking about what one person is doing, we have to remember that seeing "they" and "their" refers to an individual. If I understand the "P600" reference, that's where this comes in.
I've found it easy to constantly remind the reader that I'm not necessarily meaning plurality when using "they" or "their," especially when speaking of a named individual, by reintroducing the subject actual name, and at other times by referring to the subject as some form of "the person."
In the extreme future there are a couple things:
One is that unless there is a fundamental change to our social values professional team athletics will always be exclusively male. The reason I say this is because there is no limitation to only men in the big four professional team sports now, and there is not a single lady playing at any level in any of those sports as far as I know, though you do hear sometimes about a lady placekicker in football or perhaps a goalie in hockey getting a minor league tryout. All those leagues and individual teams are incentivized to promote any lady who is able to play the game on any competitive level.
In professional automobile racing and golf, ladies do bubble to the top occasionally.
All's to say here is that getting people who are talking about professional team sports to use "they" or "their" when talking about an individual position like pitcher or catcher will take some time. But the more we do that, the sooner it will be, if it's physically possible, that ladies develop into athletes deserving of playing for a pro football, baseball, basketball or hockey team in the future, because of hearing about "the player" and "they" instead of always "he."
And the other is the Catholic Church. Whenever something is written of an unnamed Catholic priest or bishop, "he" and "him" are always precise and correct and appropriate. I can see a future where "he" and "she" are abandoned completely, except where talking about the Church's clergy. It is the only legitimate patriarchical structure for the Christian, because it was instituted by the Lord Himself.
That mothers will always be "her" and "she" goes without saying of course.
