Robert Milner Coerver
Robert Milner Coerver was born on June 6, 1954, in Dallas, Texas, a native son of the diocese he would serve for thirty-six years. He graduated from Jesuit College Preparatory in 1972 and the University of Dallas in 1976, formed for the priesthood at Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving, and was ordained a priest of Dallas on June 27, 1980. Rome added the finishing layers: graduate study at the Angelicum, a licentiate in spiritual theology from the Gregorian, and a master's in counseling and guidance from Texas A&M-Commerce.
His priesthood was a formation priesthood. After two parish assignments he spent eleven years as director of spiritual formation at Holy Trinity Seminary, then became Dallas's director for the spiritual development and ongoing formation of priests - the priest other priests were sent to. Only in 2005 did he take a parish of his own, Our Lady of the Lake in Rockwall, then St. Rita in Dallas from 2010. Pope Francis named him the third Bishop of Lubbock on September 27, 2016, and he was ordained and installed at Christ the King Cathedral on November 21, 2016, where he has now served a decade on the High Plains.
- 2021-07CNA's July 2021 state-by-state survey of diocesan responses to Traditionis Custodes recorded no public response from the Diocese of Lubbock (listed N/A); no decree, letter or public statement of his on the old Mass has been found in the sources searched. ↗
Lubbock may be the quietest file in this batch. When Summorum Pontificum came in 2007, Coerver's predecessor, Bishop Rodriguez, told the local press he had never had a request for a Latin Mass in the diocese - and nothing found for this draft suggests the picture changed under Coerver. CNA's July 2021 survey listed Lubbock as N/A; no Traditional Latin Mass location, society presence, decree or statement of Coerver's on the old Mass has been found across his ten years, which include the whole TC era.
A diocese that never had the old Mass states it plainly: there was nothing to preserve, restrict or suppress, and his posture is no_record as a finding, not a gap. On the old Mass, his record is the record he inherited.