> Rather than ignorance, it's the ongoing development of the language.
No, it's ignorance. Because English is an explicitly non-gendered language, unlike French where any child automatically knows that "église" is feminine.
The Roman Catholic liturgy was rather simplified in 1970 and included an unfortunate neutering. In 2011, these errors were corrected, and the femininity of the Church is rightfully restored. Ignorance consists in not being up to date in this regard.
French schoolchildren seem to spend half their time learning the gender of inanimate objects. The sooner we can get rid of that, the better.
The closest equivalent time-waster we have is different names for different groups of animals (flock, pack, herd etc).