Glad to.
In the settings for the CMS Collection, add another multi-reference field to the Related Templates collection. Then in the new field, add the same or different items in a different order based on what you would have done with conditional visibility or sort.
As I said, it is a workaround and not ideal, but it would be a way for yourself or other collaborators to control the references manually.
Is that clearer? If not, please share a Read-Only link for the project if you can. Then I’ll be able to clearly show it.
Cheers,
—Matthew