The Silent Exodus: How a Toxic Culture is Pushing Men Out of the Vancouver Diocese

For years, whispers have circulated pews and parish halls across Vancouver. Good men—fathers, husbands, single men seeking spiritual grounding—have quietly drifted away from active parish life. They haven’t left the faith, but they have left the building.

We are witnessing a crisis where positions of lay leadership are being filled not by those with a heart for humble service, but by individuals who seem driven by an ideological agenda to reshape the Church—an image where traditional masculinity is viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility.

The recent scandals in the Vancouver Diocese are not anomalies; they are the inevitable eruption of a festering culture that leadership has ignored for too long. We now have two glaring examples of how this toxic dynamic operates.

Exhibit A: The Gatekeeping at St. Anthony’s (West Vancouver) At St. Anthony’s Parish, we saw the “soft” side of this hostility: exclusion. A Middle Eastern man named John, a devout citizen seeking to join the Alpha Bible study, was systematically ignored and ghosted by the coordinator, Elizabeth Holmen. For weeks, his polite emails went unanswered.

Yet, when a test was conducted using a female alias (“Faye”), Holmen replied within hours with a warm, enthusiastic welcome. The message was clear: a man seeking God is a nuisance or a threat, while a woman is a welcome addition. This is gatekeeping, pure and simple.

Exhibit B: The Abuse at “The Door Is Open” (Downtown Eastside) If St. Anthony’s represents exclusion, The Door Is Open represents danger. On October 19, 2025, long-time volunteer Johnny Zakharia was serving at this Archdiocesan outreach center when he was physically assaulted and verbally abused by a visitor.

When he turned to the staff for help, he wasn’t met with support. Instead, staff member Gwen Coleman reportedly responded with hostility, telling the victim to “be nice” to his attacker. Rather than enforcing safety protocols or protecting a dedicated volunteer, the female leadership allegedly sided with the aggressor and later disparaged the male volunteer.

It is worth noting that The Door Is Open’s own website has listed only female volunteers on its appreciation page, raising serious questions about whether men are being erased from the narrative entirely. Under the directorship of Sr. Chita Torres, a culture has seemingly emerged where a man’s safety is secondary to the staff’s ideological preferences.

The Pattern: A Hostile Environment These two incidents—one in a wealthy parish, one in a downtown shelter—paint a disturbing picture. Whether it is Elizabeth Holmen at St. Anthony’s or Gwen Coleman at The Door Is Open, the pattern is the same: female gatekeepers using their authority to belittle, exclude, or endanger men.

Sociologists have long discussed the “feminization of Christianity,” but what we are seeing in Vancouver is something more aggressive. It is a culture where men are expected to be silent, compliant, and invisible. If a man asserts himself, or even just asks to participate, he is treated as a problem.

Where is the Leadership? The leadership of the Archdiocese—often elderly pastors and bishops disconnected from the ground-level reality—seems paralyzed. They are either blissfully unaware of how toxic these environments have become, or they are terrified to act. In our current political climate, criticizing female leadership is seen as professional suicide.

But the cost of this silence is too high. The mistreatment of these men has ripped the veil off this scandal. We can no longer pretend that our parish cultures are welcoming to all. It is time for the Diocese to stop hiding behind bureaucracy and confront the reality that their institutions are becoming hostile territory for half the population.

CALL TO ACTION: DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY

The time for silence is over. We cannot allow our parishes and outreach centers to become private clubs where men are profiled, ignored, or endangered.

We are calling on the new leadership of the Vancouver Archdiocese to act. Archbishop Richard Smith was installed in May 2025 with a promise to be a shepherd for all. We need to know if that “all” includes the men currently being pushed out of his pews and volunteer lines.

Please contact the following leaders immediately. Politely but firmly demand an end to this discrimination. Ask them why Elizabeth Holmen is allowed to screen out men at St. Anthony’s, and why the safety of male volunteers is ignored at The Door Is Open.

1. The Archbishop of Vancouver Most Rev. Richard W. Smith

• Email: rcavbishop@rcav.org
  Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver
  4885 Saint John Paul II Way
  Vancouver BC V5Z 0G3
  Phone: (604) 683-0281
  Fax: (604) 683-4288

Share this story. The only way to stop this “Silent Exodus” is to make enough noise that they can no longer ignore it.